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BY 

1st Lieut. JAMES G. WARREN, Corps of Engineers, 



September, 1891. 






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HOMESPUN; OR, FIVE AND 
TWENTY YEARS AGO. 



THOMAS LACKLAND. 



" Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion. 
Nor the march of the encroaching city. 

Drives an exile 
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead. 

We may build more splendid habitations, 
Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptuies. 
But we cannot 

Buy with gold the old associations." 

Longfellow. 

" Hoc est 

Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui." 

^ Mart. Epigr. XXII. 10. 

* * 

« • 




NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HUKD AND HOUGHTON. 

1867. 



^ 



V 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
HuRiv ANE> Houghton, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District fJourt for the Southern District of 
jjew York 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



Ci- c*^ 7622 

3<v 



CONTENTS. 



PKEFACE . . ." '. . 7 



BOOK L — Penates. 

THRESHOLDS 11 

FIRE 0:S THE HEARTH .15 

RAINY DAYS 28 

GARDEN WORK 37 

SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY 49 

HUCKLEBERRYING 65 

BARN LIFE 78 

A MORNING AT THE BROOK 93 

OUR AUNT 103 

AUTUMN DAYS 113 

THANKSGIVING ......... 123 

HARD WINTERS 134 

ONLY A LITTLE . 146 



BOOK n. — Vicinage. 

THE TOWN MEETING 151 

THE COUNTRY STORE 161 



^V^jV V "y ^ <:> ^ 






IV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

THE COUNTRY TAVERN . 171 

THE COUNTRY MUSTER . . . ... . ■. 185 

THE COUNTY FAIR 196 

THE COUNTRY MINISTER 206 

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR 221 

THE COUNTRY LAWYER 234 

THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER 245 

THE POOR-HOUSE 254 

THE DISTRICT SCHOOL . . . . ■ . . . . 265 

COCKCROW 275 



BOOK III. — Bucolics. 

A day's work on THE FARM 283 

farmers' wives 295 

farmers' daughters 306 

farmers' sons 319 

the hired man . . ., . . . . . . 330 

the turkey nest . 342 





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PREFACE. 



XT has always fallen to the lot of Royal 
Families to have their historians and 
chroniclers, but to Farmers and plain Coun- 
try People never. We have graceful descrip- 
tions of the Alhambra, as well as the history 
of Hampton Court, Pitti Palace, the Kremlin, 
c id the famous Halls of the Montezumas; 
but few or no pens are put to service on be- 
half of the Farm-house, the Homestead, and 
the Rustic Cottage. 

Much has been written and read, too, of 
the Boulevards and Rotten Row, of the Strand 
and the Corso ; but little enough of quiet 
country roads, sequestered green lanes, cart- 
tracks through the woods, and winding foot- 
paths across the pasture-lands. 



VI PRE FA CE. 

On the historic page, th6 Field of the Cloth 
of Gold makes a brilliant episode indeed ; 
but while Homespun performs the actual ser- 
vice, little or nothing is said about that. 
The ancient Golden Fleece has been liber- 
ally talked about in mythologic history ; our 
Golden Fleece is genuine Homespun, and 
that only. And we find, too, in the Greek 
story a great deal said in praise of the wife 
of Ulysses, because she pursued her spinning 
with such ceaseless industry ; but an exceed- 
ingly small measure of panegyric is heaped 
on the good dames in our farm-houses of 
thirty years ago, because they stood at their 
wheels and spun the thread at home with 
such patience and faith. 

It gives us a special delight to reflect that 
some of our greatest men were men of genu- 
ine homespun, — altogether domestic and sim- 
ple in their character. Bred in the heart and 
centre of strong domestic influences, they held 
on by them affectionately to the last. Web- 
ster wrote home from "Washington, while 
carrying on his broad shoulders the burdens 



PREFA CE. vii 

of the State Department, for some of those 
beans to bake which he thought could be got 
nowhere out of New England. Jefferson's 
'" Garden Book " lets us fully into the secret 
of his devotion to home, as his familiar let- 
ters to his daughters disclose his longings for 
an early return to its sincere pleasures. John 
Taylor of Caroline dressed in the native 
homespun throughout his public career, his 
character remaining to the last the very touch- 
stone of simplicity and truthfulness. 

The history of a household is as well worth 
writing as that of a kingdom, any day. 
Household economy is the hint and germ 
of the science of political economy itself. 
We do not see why it is not as distinctive 
a mark of character to be born in homespun 
as " in the purple " ; and it is certain that 
more valuable men have emerged from the 
former than from the latter. 

A dusty realm indeed must be the human 
heart that loves the World better than Home 
— politeness rather than truth — others more 
than its own. The man in whom the do- 



vm PREFACE. 

mestic feeling awaits development, is yet to 
discover the other hemisphere of his being. 
Home-life and home-love are English, — ex- 
clusive and nowise cosmopolitan ; they take 
hold of the soil itself, and, like ivy and roses, 
climb to the very roof-tree. Until a man is 
fairly domesticated, he has not got a footing ; 
he has not yet become his own, but is still 
another's ; he is locked out from the enjoy- 
ment of wealth of which he is the rightful 
owner, unaware all the while that he carries 
the key in his own hand. 




BOOK FIRST, 



PENATES. 



" Invent portum. Spes etJbrtuTia, vaJete ; 
Sat me lusisti, ludite nunc alios.'''' 




THRESHOLDS. 

WHEN I meet a person from the country 
in the Bedlam of the streets, I am 
straightway carried back to the orchards and. 
clover-fields, to meadows and running brooks. 
At once I hear calves bleat in their pens, and 
cattle low on the hill-side pastures. I roam in 
big barns, thread path-streaked timber strips, 
and catch the cheery sound of cock-crow in 
the morning. 

All objects are so suggestive. My friend 
carries about him the scents of hay and huckle- 
berry pastures, as well as hints of fresh butter 
and cheese. In him seem to be mysteriously 
bound up the most delightfully homelike asso- 
ciations, as in the thumbed leaves of some dear 
old book. The low and broad roof, milk-pans 
set against the wall in the sun, a row of hives 
in the sheltered corner of the little garden, 
apple-trees blushing with blossoms and musi- 
cal with bees, doves cooing and hens cackling 
about the yard, winter fires of good oak and 



12 HOMESPUN. 

hickory on the hearth, — pictures like these all 
hang, in my thought, about ray country friend, 
like the very clothes he has on, and I feel as 

if I must stoD him short and ask him how he 

i. 

left the folks at home. 

When the country dweller goes about build- 
ing his house, the first thing he looks for, after 
digging his cellar, is a door-stone. Well do 
his far-sighted instincts tell him how smoothly 
the feet of gladness and grief will wear it ; what 
light spirits are to trip across it as they enter, 
and what heavy burdens may be carried forth 
in the coming days of sorrow and separation. 

The entrance to a man's house gives to the 
outside world much of the expression of his 
domestic life. He comes out on his doorstep 
in the moist April sunsets to listen to the chir- 
rup of the first robin in the apple-tree, or catch 
the pipings of the early frogs in the marshy 
corner of the home lot. He gives open-handed 
welcomes at this point, and here he bids fare- 
well. The eldest daughter — just married — - 
steps over it on the blithe June morning, — 
and the dead child is lifted across in the sad 
afternoon of October. They all cluster upon 
it, at the return of the annual Thanksgiving; 
and in the Sunday mornings of summer they 
gather there, snapping off the spikes of lilac 



THRESHOLDS. 13 

blossoms while they wait for the two-horse 
wagon to drive up and carry them to meeting. 

I have, before now, unexpectedly come upon 
cellars of old country houses that have long 
ago disappeared from the landscape ; the walls 
fallen in and mantled with weeds; no relic of 
a chimney standing; the smooth door-stone 
gone ; nettles and chokeweeds growing luxuri- 
antly in the pit ; dead and drear silence brood- 
ing over the spot: — and I think that neither 
Marius at Carthage nor Gibbon at ruined 
Rome could have felt, in their way, the grief 
of a sadder desolation. It must be a heart 
unused to its own self that can confront such 
sights unstirred. 

The streak of a path through the grass 

to the well now choked and dry ; the apple-trees 
stinted, decayed, and blotched with cankering 
mosses ; here and there a stone from the ruined 
cellar wall lying as it was thrown out ; clumps 
of white birches and alders crowding down to 
the brink ; no smoke curling above a bright 
hearth-stone ; no faces eagerly pressed against 
window panes; no feet of children to make 
little prints about the door; nothing but a 
silence utterly voiceless all around ; — a Coli- 
seum in ruins cannot move the heart like this 
wreck of what was once a Home. None of 



14 , HOMESPUN. 

the fallen arches, fragmentary columns, crum- 
bling viaducts, or deserted London bridges could 
possibly suggest the outlines of a sadder story. 
The single cat-bird, mewing in the alders then, 
is more eloquent than the best inspired pens of 
History. Nature herself laments the end of the 
little drama, and with leaves and vines and 
greenest grasses hastens to throw over decay 
itself an expression of pathetic beauty. 

If a Home in ruins excites feelings of such 
sort as this, — how easy to call back to life 
again the soul of a happiness now buried 
under the snows of many a winter's absence, 
which dwelt within walls that are still stand- 
ing, and hallowed a spot to which the heart 
will remain loyal so long as it beats in the 
breast. 

But thresholds are not broad, nor are 

people wont to tarry long upon them : — they 
are but for passing over. What is to be seen 
within, — what simple sort of life grows and 
ripens through the summers and winters from 
attic to cellar and from the front gate to the 
pasture bars, we will straightway go in and be- 
hold for ourselves : and on this threshold of the 
whole matter let me take you by the hand, 
gentle reader, and conduct you along. 



FIBE ON THE HEARTH, 

HOW little seems the gate, and how low 
the wall, to the one who went out but 
yesterday a Boy from home, and comes back 
again to-day a Man ! There are few illusions 
with which the years delight to make such 
cruel havoc as with these of our youth. 

Yet the fireplace is just as wide, and the 
wooden mantel as high, as when the tea-kettle 
used to sing on the hob in the still winter af- 
ternoons, and the old folks sat with the hick- 
ory blaze shining straight into their faces. 
There may have been a revolution in the 
house, — lifting up the ceiling, pushing back 
the partitions, and letting in larger windows, 
— but it is very pleasant to know that by the 
old hearth the old memories are kept sound 
and whole ; that if they are driven down from 
the twilight of the garret, from the stillness of 
the chambers, and even out of the favorite 
keeping-room, they retreat as by instinct to 
the hearthstone, where they swarm once more 



16 HOMESPUN. 

in the cheery fire-blaze before flitting on clouds 
of smoke up the chimney, skyward. 

The choicest woods to lay across the and- 
irons are hickory and ash ; they split clean and 
clear, the blaze they give forth is a transparent 
blaze, and the bed of coals they make is hard 
and heaping. We can sit and look into a 
mass of these ruddy coals for a w^hole even- 
ing, and feel comforted. It is Tennyson who 
calls for a bed of such when he says — 

" Bring in great, logs and let them lie, 
To make a solid core of heat." 

We are all of us natural fire-worshippers, — 
as much so as the Parsees themselves. These 
devotees never proffered more genuine adora- 
tion to the flames in which they saw the Soul 
of Light, nor did Incas below the tropics ever 
pay faithfuUer homage to the great Sun-source 
of existence on solstitial mornings, than does 
the bleak man of bleak New England, in his 
inmost heart, to the honest blaze that glows 
and flickers over his hearth. There may be no 
feeling of idolatry in his love for the open fire, 
— but his spirit does daily and nightly offer 
secret sacrifice at its shrine, and in the dancing 
flames repeats its homebred litany. 

They used to say in the old Virginia man- 
sions that a good bright fire was the handsom- 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 17 

est piece of furniture in the room ; but, alas 
for it ! the open door opposite was allowed 
to let the whole expression of comfort through. 
What can a house be without a fire on the 
hearth ; and, above all, a house in the country ? 
It is difficult to think of Home without kind- 
ling up a pleasant hearth-blaze with the thought. 
We search for the harmless shadows wander- 
ing up and down the walls; for the auroral 
flashes pulsing across the little panes in the 
windows, and making the home - sentiment 
legible. Without these, every room beneath 
the roof is populous with swarthy and repul- 
sive images. 

Fire is so social. It has such playful and 
tender sympathies, though its tongue be hot 
and fierce, and its maw ravenous. In the 
evenings, we sit down in silence before the 
inviting hearth, and look into its face inquir- 
ingly for revelations. We enjoy frolics with 
the wildest fancies, too, as they trip hither and 
thither across the restless waves of flame, un- 
til we give up trying to keep them company. 
The imagination plunges into the boiling flood 
of red and white heats, wallowing in its surg- 
ing and retreating tides, and dragging forth 
drowned images, dripping from the bath of a 
brighter beauty. So we all love to gather 



18 HOMESPUN. 

around the hearth, conscious that even its 
dreamiest silence is intensely social. 

But the Age we live in is an everlasting 

busybody. It invades every nook and corner, 
let it be ever so quiet and drowsy; like the 
tax-gatherer, it passes by no man's door. And 
with its many other vaunted improvements, 
this same Age has pushed forward an army of 
sappers and miners, masons and stove-fitters 
by name, with clinking trowels and clattering 
pipes, who have come and camped down in 
the very pleasantest rooms of all the house- 
holds in the land. What with their rattling 
and hammering, and thumping and pounding, 
they have done their best to beat down and 
trample under foot all the tender associations 
that belong to the open hearth. They have 
drawn their curtains of sightless brick-and- 
mortar across the dear old fireplaces, and 
closed the chimney corner against spirit-vis- 
itors altogether. They have condemned all 
the delightful memories to a dark imprison- 
ment, where their blackened skeletons will be 
found some day for the digging, overgrown 
with the nettleweeds and long grasses that 
ever make haste to beautify these homestead 
desolations. They have mounted a grim cy- 
lindrical invention, with the fierce, red eye of 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 19 

Polyphemus, and bidden the shivering house- 
hold gather around it to drive the numbness 
out of their fingers and the chill from their 
hearts : and this instrument goes by the mod- 
ern name of the Stove. 

Henceforth, Penates, away with your- 
selves to attic or cellar as fast as you can! 
You are wanted here no longer. Grand- 
mother, in her high-crowned cap, will need to 
sit no more in the corner now, but must post 
herself in the middle of the floor rather. The 
smooth cedar tray, with rag-balls for the new 
home-made carpet, will now be kicked about 
under everybody's feet. There are to be no 
more household gatherings as of old in the 
evening, for the vestal fires are all gone. out. 
A stove, you know, is not a hearth ; heat is 
not fire ; warmth is not blaze. All those brill- 
iant crowds which came and went for us in 
chariots of fire, their eyes sparkling and burn- 
ing from the midst of the living coals, have 
taken their leave forever. The cities of silver 
and gold that used to lie under the forestick — 
bristling with steeples and roofs, substantial 
with towers and walls, with castles and cathe- 
drals, and washed on either side by rivers with 
such tides as never shone in the suns of our 
heaven — are faded, and darkened, and dead. 



20 HOMESPUN. 

No Herculaneum was ever more oppressed 
with the silence which rests on its long-buried 
streets. The cities of the plain are not more 
entirely extinct and forgotten. 

Near a blackened stove the human 

heart builds no altars. It sends its aspirations 
to heaven through no soot- begrimed pipes. 
It waits upon the turn of no tinman's clumsy 
"flues" and "dampers." Unless its senti- 
ments be warmed in the blaze of a genial heat, 
they will refuse to soar on the wings of white 
and blue smokes skyward. Down the chimney 
is direct and open ; but through a double- 
kneed stove-pipe the way is crooked and for- 
bidding indeed. Looking up a wide-throated 
aperture, one may possibly catch a sky-glimpse 
as big as his hand; but through the narrow 
neck of a stove-pipe — never. 

A Homestead without a pair of Old 

Folks — " Time's doting chroniclers " — seated 
contentedly in the chimney corner, would 
hardly be a homestead at all. If they are in 
the picture it is complete. 

There you may find them, day in and day 
out, in all sorts of weather, steadfast to their 
places and to one another. When the eaves 
drip, in the middle of the winter forenoons, the 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 21 

old man with the head of silver abandons his 
post and the last Saturday's newspaper, to 
make the accustomed tour of the kitchen offi- 
ces, the sheds, or the barn, lingering by the 
way to throw down a handful of grain for the 
pinched poultry. With what minuteness he is 
cautioned by Grandmother not to go out in- 
sufficiently clad ; and with what a single- 
hearted joy she welcomes him when he comes 
back to her again ! He would hardly get a 
warmer reception if he was just come home 
from a genuine polar expedition. And as soon 
as he has nestled down snugly in his cushioned 
chair once more, and dealt out on the glowing 
forestick a few vigorous raps with the tongs, 
he will launch forth into such voluble details 
of the keen air out doors, — suggesting Arctic 
reminiscences which no listener could very 
well call in question, — as will find the white- 
haired old couple topic of earnest talk till din- 
ner is brought on the table. 

The children invariably come home from 
school, in the wintry afternoons, to find the 
placid pair seated in that same accustomed 
spot : — the strip of sunshine lying pale and 
sleepily across the floor, the gray cat curled 
before the fire in the nest of her endless 
dreams, and the little sprites that are " pegged 



22 HOMESPUN. 

in the knotty entrails " of the oak logs singing 
the drowsy hours away. Wilkie would have 
made the picture immortal. Down along the 
snowy roads the winds are wrestling with 
travellers, pulling and tearing at hats, and 
cloaks, and meagre robes ; — but no winds are 
to be felt ia this room's tranquil haven ; here 
all days are halcyon days, and no atmosphere 
is breathed but that of peace and heaven. In 
the old man's cheeks the rich mottle is as fresh, 
to appearance, as it ever was ; the features be- 
tray no look of being pinched with the cold ; 
no snows can get in to benumb his attenuated 
fingers. 

They two constitute a sort of family tribu- 
nal ; and a highly useful arrangement it is, in 
a crowded domestic congress. They are al- 
ways to be found on the judicial bench, ready 
to give audience. Many are the tough little 
problems that are brought to them for their 
wise solution. They pass upon cases in which 
the interests of the turbulent younglings are 
involved, with a promptness which challenges 
the disputants' wonder ; and if Grandma only 
said thus and so, there is no use in hunting for 
higher authority, — she is conceded to be the 
"end of the law." Or Grandpa promises to 
mend the broken sled ; and never was sled of 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 23 

boy repaired with greater dexterousness and 
ingenuity. From early morning until night- 
fall he rambles about the house on short excur- 
sions, filled full and thoroughly warmed with 
the dear home feeling. 

And when one pair of dimmed eyes be- 
comes yet dimmer, and at last fades entirely 
from the hearth, — and one stooping form is 
carried forth from its cherished corner to be 
seen there no more forever, — what vacancy in 
the heart of the household then ! Looking up 
from her forenoon occupation, Grandmother 
throws her eyes, from sheer force of habit, into 
the opposite corner ; but the chair stands empty 
over there, and a great tear trembles on her 
cheek as she adjusts her needle in the knitting- 
sheath she wears. The fire is not so hot that 
it can warm her chiUed heart any longer. She 
listens to the wintry winds that are blowing 
without, — and thinks of that single grave, 
freshly rounded under the pines. 

It is at night that the hearth shows in its 

true glory. The fire-spirits seem to love best to 
assemble then. In those late days of Autumn, 
when the evenings are grown perceptibly 
longer, and the cricket sings in the corner as 
if he were hoarse, and the sodden leaves lie 
thickly trampled in the walks and yard, — the 



24 HOMESPUN. 

first blaze of a fire on the hearth is very 
welcome, for it is a summons to all the ac- 
customed worshippers to gather again at the 
family shrine ; and it distinctly holds out 
pleasant promises that cluster, like ripe ivy 
berries, about the long months of the winter. 
There is just enough chill in the air to drive 
one to the fire ; and on the hearth is just 
enough fire to make the chill enjoyable. 
Through the round of the whole year, I know 
no other fires like this first hearth-blaze in the 
Autumn. The group of Winter delights shines 
out then, as upon a canvas. 

The chief treasure of our winters is buried 
in the depth of the long evenings. Father and 
Mother are early in their places, and the chil- 
dren range themselves conveniently around. 
No matter what the peculiar employments of 
the time, the associations that clothe all are of 
a really sacred character. The masks which 
each may have worn through the day, unlace 
then and fall off. Face answers to face, as 
heart silently speaks to heart. The round 
world has no enticements to offer, so simple 
and true as those of the wintry fire-light. Men 
afterwards throw back longing glances from 
the advanced paths of their feverish life-career 
to an innocent picture like this, and in their 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 25 

hearts confess it is the very realization of which 
they are striving to be possessed. Yet they 
drift further and further froni it instead, till 
nothing remains of the picture but the picture, 
its outlines fading into faintness, and with 
little life in its body save what a jaded mem- 
ory has it in its power to supply. 

The smoky stories that go with these even- 
ing delights at the hearth are not to be set 
down as the days are in the calendar : — they 
are gypsy children of the peaceful hours them- 
selves, and troop forth only at such times as 
they are wanted. The ancient Dutch tiles are 
not half so crowded with their Scripture illus- 
trations as are our commonest old fireplaces 
with scenes that illustrate these homely winter- 
evening stories. The youngest boy of all is 
not more under the spell than his eldest brother. 
They climb the stairs to bed, at last, in strange 
enough company. The girls feed the coals 
with wisps of paper, and watch, while the 
sparkles, travel up and down the burnt heap, 
to " see the folks go home from meeting." A 
genuine ghost story instantly makes the logs 
populous ; the shadowy faces of spirits peer 
from mysterious caverns among the sticks ; 
their impalpable forms flit across weltering seas 
of flame, climb nimbly into towers and stee- 



26 HOMESPUN. 

pies, and beckon at windows through which 
pour the floods of yellow sunsets. 

All this, and many, many times more, can a 
story of some sleepless ghost evoke from the 
logs that were so lately chopped on the old 
wood ]ot. 

At the hearth, the heart seems to bind 

up all its sheaves for harvest. There all its 
joys — domestic and foreign — are gathered in. 
There the sombre woof is gaily shot with bright 
figures and patterns. The self-communion at 
this altar is searching and thorough. A man 
sits down face to face with himself, and would 
love to think no more of the world or its 
guile. 

K there might be a hearth in every heart ! 
And the precious memories which one brings 
away with him, too, seasoned well with time, 
rich with ripened colors, and mellow with 
flavors that cannot be described! 

The fireplace has been the district school- 
house for the discipline of the present genera- 
tion in the virtues they possess, whether few or 
many. What is tender in popular sentiment — 
what is simple and direct in popular preaching 
.and speaking — what is strong and homely 
and well-grounded in popular phrase, has its 
healthy and enduring root here. Tear up all 



FIRE ON THE HEARTH. 



27 



the broad hearth-stones in the land to-day, and 
these very memories would start at once, like 
tender grasses, around them, to beautify the 
spot whence they sprung and keep them green 
forever. 





BAINY DATS. 



WHEN I go off into the country to stay- 
awhile, I like, of all things, on pulling 
the bedclothes about me and settling my head 
in the pillows for the night, to hear the rain 
drip from the eaves on the roof of the porch. 
The sound makes the sense of comfort and 
cosiness full and complete. If I were sure the 
world was to be drowned out before morning, 
it would scarcely ruffle the serenity of my spirit 
one whit. I lie and let flow through my mind 
unformed fancies of tall, feathery brakes, pearly 
with rows of rain-drops, emptying their leafy 
buckets into my boot-tops ; of drenched boughs 
in the woods, slapping their showers in my 
neck and face ; of mill-dams carried off by ris- 
ing floods ; of bridges gone, and deluges work- 
ing down between the singing shingles into 
the room : — but the effort, somehow, is after a 
time too great, and I sink to slumber among 
the murmurs of the rain as tranquilly as a child 
goes off, with its last plaything held tight in 
its little hand. 



RAINY DAYS. 29 

They have no real rainy days in the city. 
What are so styled are only dark days — dirty 
days — days of mud, and slosh, and soured 
tempers — days of soggy boots, saturated 
clothes, and spoiled hats. In the country, Na- 
ture makes nothing of showing you her face ; 
and it is not lowery and scowling, either, — it 
is tearful, more or less " blubbered," as Spencer 
would say, yet altogether placid and calm un- 
derneath. The rain is no more than a chang- 
ing mood there, which she comes out of all the 
happier for having submitted to its brief ob- 
scuration. 

It is not an easy matter to say if any two 
individuals, harbored by chance in the same 
shelter, get just the same sort of experience out 
of a rainy day. I have been a patient listener 
to many a personal narrative on this theme, 
but every one, I found, was the property of its 
owner alone. The heavens, therefore, do not 
rain down the same influences upon us all. 

Then, too, rain affects us differently in dif- 
ferent places. It is one thing if you are shel- 
tered snugly and warm at home, at the opening 
of a gray November storm, such as hoods the 
New England hills with its weird-looking 
mists, — and quite another if you happen to 
be weather-bound in some far back little coun- 



30 HOMESPWSr. 

try tavern, with a dismally long day ahead, 
and only a checker-board, a foul stove, and a 
handful of water-soaked idlers for social con- 
solation. One could make himself very happy 
at home, with dog and cat and books and fam- 
ily close about him ; but in these by-places, 
the sentiment seems to get rubbed off by the 
dirty clothes, and trampled to death under the 
muddy boots. 

But ah I it is so delicious to the spirit that 
is at all sensitive, to hear the big drops patter- 
ing on the roof ; the garret is the place to get 
true inspiration from the rain. What hidden 
realms of pleasure the boys and girls explore 
up there, rummaging the old place from end 
to end ! Side-saddles and antique bonnets are 
dragged forth from their twilight domains, to 
do service once more for a generation un- 
dreamt of in the day of their original glory. 
Faded out pamphlets, and books with half 
covers, — perhaps a fragment of old Flavins 
Josephus, or the remnant of an odd volume of 
Colonial History, or, more likely, a pile of 
preserved almanacs, inlaid and overlaid with 
dust and diligently eaten of rats, — fan the em- 
bers of the childish thought into a living flame, 
and the afternoon hours glide away as silently 
as the twilight owl sails off into the mystery 



RAINY DAYS. 31 

of a deeper darkness. The Saturday after- 
noons in old garrets are well-nigh sacred, for 
the memories that are stored within them ; and 
the mere mention of them along with the rain 
is enough to bring back a lost man entirely to 
himself again. 

Rainy days at home ar-e apt, likewise, to put 
in the head a vagabondish wish for a thought- 
ful ramble over the domestic premises. It is a 
fatuity with me then to go poking into every 
odd and curious corner there is ; in my mind, 
an indefinable association links out-of-the-way 
house-nooks and rainy days together. To 
stand idly at the back door and listen to the 
water rilling into the hogshead at the corner, 
is a good deal better than Casta Diva ; and 
the melodies stick faster in the heart. Around 
the back buildings and under the sheds huddle 
the poultry, with drooping tails and drowned 
feet, watching the sprinkle of the rain and lis- 
tening to its sounds, till they fall asleep on 
foot, at last, from the sheer narcotism of its 
monotony. The house dog walks from the 
barn to the shed, and from the shed to the 
kitchen, occasionally throwing up a weather- 
wise eye at the clouds, as if he were wonder- 
ing when it would clear off again. The cows 
are gone under the barn for a while, and there 
they quietly ruminate and grow steamy. The 



32 HOMESPUN. 

horse looks cautiously out of his stall window, 
becomes disheartened with the prospect, and 
draws his long face in again. 



As soon as the Spring buds are ready 



to burst in millions of little green parachutes, 
and the brooks are rising and rinsing out the 
gullies, and the trout leap eagerly for the stray 
tributes of fortune that come swimming down, 
— none of the common pleasures known are 
matched by that of being out in the rain. The 
drizzle is truly delightful. Aquarius himself 
ought then to confess himself satisfied. The 
fine rain seems to work its way into the very 
pores, and refreshes as well as equalizes the 
animal spirits. 

With this weather the noise of running 
brooks is in perfect tune. In the low, alluvial 
tracts sprout sheaves of rank marsh plants of 
gigantic promise, among such weeds as people 
these swampy regions. , The drops of rain 
fringe the black birch and alder boughs like 
lines of bells, dripping from them in rows with 
the slightest shaking. The torpid old fisher- 
man, like the sun-loving turtle, may be seen 
glued to the rock by the pond-side, waiting 
patiently for bites and a precarious dinner ; 
yet if you go and sit down beside him in his 
own spuit, he will let you further into the still 



RAINY DAYS. 88 

secrets of Nature — concerning fish, new- 
moons, mink traps, high waters, woodcraft, 
and river lore — than you could extract from 
all the poets in a three months' reading ; and 
it will be wholly fresh and reliable, with the 
earthy smell to it, too. 

A gray and sullen November rain, coming 
down over the hills as if it meant to seize and 
wrap you in its chilly folds, has its really 
charming side, too. It is good to be out on 
the hill-side pastures then. The brown and 
matted grasses, the faded ferns, the stripped 
trees, the straggling sheep huddled under the 
lee of the stone wall, and the woodland dimly 
receding lilce a ship at sea in the dense fog, 
start around the thought a crowd of familiar 
associations. Home comforts take shape in- 
stantly in the mind, and the winter landscape 
before the imaginary view grows green in the 
prospect of its recurring pleasures. There is 
a mysterious power in these autumn rains to 
shut one up within himself, which begets the 
cosy feeling that attends upon their approach ; 
and if we come nearer still and look close 
enough, we can detect, if we cannot trace, the 
secret law that holds our souls to the heart of 
Nature. 

The falling rains of this season find stout 

3 



84 HOMESPUN. 

piles of wood about the sheds, ready for the 
ringing axe of December, when the mercury is 
low and the blood needs a start in the veins. 
They drive vainly against the many-paned 
homestead windows, and now and then force 
themselves in a little, before they are over. 
They drip, and keep dripping, from the boughs 
of the big elm before the house, and give a 
sorry look to the apple trees behind it. 

And then the barns, too, swarm with associ- 
ations that are filled with a wonderful mag- 
netism. The broad bay is heaped full, and the 
staunch scaffolds overhang with their sweet- 
scented burthen. The poultry go slying about 
the dry floors, and in and out the secret nooks 
made by the hay, pecking at stray seeds and 
very happy in their security from the storm 
without. The cows are contented to stay late 
in their stalls in the morning, nor will they go 
far from the door even when let out. Occa- 
sionally, an old cat, with a half- wild - expres- 
sion, crosses the mow up under the ridge-pole, 
making rustling footfalls that break the silence 
ominously. 

On rainy days, the old home-kitchens, so 
spacious and clean, are alive with domestic 
enterprises of every device and description ; 
and if it so chances that it is the baking-day, 



RAINY DAYS. 35 

the scene can hardly be matched anywhere 
for its industry. Bowls and trays and long 
wooden spoons — iron kettles stuffed with rye- 
and-indian dough — pies by the dozen, and 
joints all ready and waiting for the spit ; fire 
on the hearth, and fire wandering to and fro 
over the concave of the great brick oven ; min- 
gled scents of all good things baking and sim- 
mering ; every one busy and intensely inter- 
ested ; and the whole presenting a picture of a 
domestic laboratory, in which choicest gratifi- 
cations are secured for every variety of appe- 
tite. None save the well-ordered and thorough 
country household can present an exhibit of 
this sort ; and then it becomes one of the most 
substantial of home attractions. 

It is an indescribable pleasure, likewise, to 
be out riding in the rain, if the long coun- 
try roads are any way passable ; shut in from 
the reach of storm and wind, snug and dry as 
a mouse in a Cheshire cheese, your horse sure- 
footed and his face set homewards, — you feel 
a glow of satisfaction even in the spongieet of 
days, and while driving between dark stone 
walls and drowned reaches of woodland. It 
gives me a secret pleasure then to roll past 
lordly farm-houses, catching glimpses of smok- 
ing cattle about the barn doors, or signs of in- 



36 HOMESPUN, 

quisitive human life at the front windows ; or 
sounds of responsive threshing-flails from the 
barns on far-off hill-sides, of barking watch- 
dogs, and shrill chanticleer in the pauses. All 
the more welcome and cheery is it then, be- 
cause Home is ahead, with its bright fires, and 
loving faces, and dry comforts uncounted. 

■ There is no reason why a storm of rain 

should be a spell of gloom, to be grumbled 
through as we get through the annual Fast 
Day of the Governor. Why do we choose to 
be no better than barometers, — such sensitive 
children of the weather ? Why should we 
consent to let the clouds make or mar our hap- 
piness ? Does not the sun shine at the centre 
of our being forever? It ought rather to be 
that rainy days, by the mysterious aid of their 
associations, bring us into closer and better ac- 
quaintance with ourselves, external attractions 
having for the time parted with the most of 
their power ; and, in this better sense, are they 
to be offered a hail and a welcome, and even 
hoarded with those golden strips and margins 
of our existence, when we journey more para- 
sangs than on any other. At home^ they serve 
to wash the heart clean of its worldliness, even 
as they wash the windows with their welcome 
flood. 



^^^^ 


1 


^^^l»^^^^^l 


^^^LJSftt^^ZSBiTffiHl^W 


«iMfm: 


^^^^w^m/ 



GABBEN WORK, 

"/^ OD Almighty first planted a Garden," 
^^ says Bacon, " and, indeed, it is the 
purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest 
refreshment to the spirits of man." 

" There is no ancient gentlemen," says the 
grave-digger in Hamlet, " but gardeners, ditch- 
ers, and grave-makers ; they hold up Adam's 
profession." 

Said the gentle old Archbishop Bancroft to 
his friend Hough, who was visiting him in 
Suffolk : " Almost all you see is the work of 
my own hands, though I am bordering on 
eighty years of age. My old woman does the 
weeding, and John mows the turf and digs for 
me : but all the nicer work — the sowing, graft- 
ing, budding, transplanting, and the like — I 
trust to no other hand but my own, so long, at 
least, as my health will allow me to enjoy so 
pleasing an occupation." 

The Poets are full of the delights of 

gardening ; Cowley and Pope, at least, came 



88 HOMESPUN. 

to realize their dreams in this respect. One 
can run through very few pages of English 
verse, and not have to leap hedges of allusions 
to gardens, or without bringing away a mem- 
ory stuck full with their fragrant blossoms. 
An appreciative writer observes that " Bacon 
and Milton were the prophet and the herald, 
Pope and Addison the reformer and the legisla- 
tor, of horticulture." Spenser's stanzas abound 
with real garden pictures, terrace raised above 
terrace, and lawn stretching beyond lawn. 
The garden scene in " Romeo and Juliet " is 
the favorite one with all readers, because in 
the fragrant atmosphere of the garden, in the 
tempered moonlight, and to the sound of trick- 
ling waters, love is made in the true spirit of 
romance. Tennyson has shown us how it is 
attempted in the more exquisite passages of 
his everywhere-quoted " Maud." The poet 
Shenstone wrote from his favorite Leasowes : 
" I feed my wild ducks, I water my carnations ; 
happy enough if I could extinguish my am- 
bition quite." Father Adam was placed in a 
garden to " dress and keep it." Every reader 
of English recalls at once Milton's fine descrip- 
tion of our first parents in Eden, rising with 
the dawn, to dress the alleys green, — 

" Their walk at noon, with branches overgrown." 



GARDEN WORK. 39 

The gray old monks, in fact, who had an 
eye open to the good things of life in their 
day, were the first genuine cultivators of flow- 
ers and fruits, and . around their solitary keeps 
of learning slept securely many a productive 
garden and blossoming orchard. They had 
the true relish for what those things brought 
them, and tended a tree or a flower with the 
same zeal with which they wore the pavement 
smooth with their frequent devotions. They 
taught us horticulture, and we are thus be- 
come their debtors for more than the mere 
learning they were instrumental in handing 
down. 

The sincerest pleasures of the home-life 

are woven closely in with those of the garden. 
I have almost made one of my own heart, from 
the habit of living over again the delight I 
used to take in digging, planting, weeding, and 
watering the little half-acre Elysium, where 
grew so luxuriantly my bulbous cabbages and 
bright-eyed beans. I am conscious that Goethe 
did not miss of the general truth in his obser- 
vation that he took the solidest delight in the 
simplest pleasures ; and, for an enduring pleas- 
ure, clean and sweet both in itself and its mem- 
ories, we can truly think of nothing in Nature 
before a little garden. It should not be so 



40 HOMESPUN. 

large as to become a task-master, and thus 
worry out the placid zeal ; but only spacious 
enough to excite the physical energy and give 
a healthy start to the thought. 

I am not making any allusion to city gardens 
now, nor to their more luxuriantly gay cousins 
of the suburbs, where the owner is far from 
being the author, but employs his gardener as 
many a man does his upholsterer ; those make 
beautiful " estates," and are objects of attrac- 
tion alike to shrewd brokers and fashionable 
lovers of Nature ; but they have few of the 
savory associations of simplicity, and peace, 
and home. Fine enough exotics may grow 
and show there, whose health and beauty sal- 
aried gardeners look carefully after ; but you 
will search in vain for simple morning-glories, 
climbing like eager children to the window-sill 
to peep in, or for snowy caps out among the 
bean-poles in the delicious summer weather. 

Work, before breakfast, in the retired gar- 
den-spot is a sort of inspiration for the rest of 
the day. In that still hour, you mark how 
your lettuce and cabbages have shot up during 
the night, and at once renew your faith in 
Nature. I fear my closest friend would have 
failed to recognize me then, as I used to look 
in that patched and shredded apparel, the limp 



GARDEN WORK. 41 

hat-rim falling down about my face and eyes, 
and on my knees, too, — before many others 
were, — for striped bugs and green cabbage- 
worms. 

Or, next to the early morning work, with 
the dewy earth offering its grateful exhalations 
to the nostrils, the twilight stroll through the 
limited grounds is full of peaceful delight, and 
tends to provoke contemplation. If you were 
in the morning the laborer, you can realize that 
you are the lord at evening ; going about and 
pulling up scattered weeds, perhaps changing 
around a few plants, thinning the sprouted 
rows of beets or onions, grubbing up some 
pestiferous root, or planning somewhat for the 
next morning's industry. 

In all the old-fashion gardens one finds a 
double row of currant bushes, almost as inev- 
itable as the lilac or the white rose-bush, at the 
garden gate. A charming alley is thus opened 
up for nearly the length of the plat. They 
maintain their lines as faithfully as appointed 
metes and bounds ; and, spread over the green 
ruffles of their leaves, may be seen, all through 
the season, a white crop of old ladies' caps, 
that tells of the grandmother whose hand 
planted the purple morning-glories under the 
windows, and whose head now and then shows 



42 HOMESPUN. ' 

itself between the verdurous walls of the bean- 
vines. A man would as soon think of tearing 
a true sentiment out of his heart, if such a 
thing could be 4one, as of pulling up the cur- 
rant bushes that are so well rooted in the 
garden. 

How the red beet-tops glisten in their long 
rows, as if some pains-taking hand had var- 
nished them, one by one ! How crowded stand 
those carrots, boring each its long yellow fin- 
gers into the mellowed subsoil ! With what a 
Dutch-like and dogmatic air the swelling cab- 
bages erect their pulpy heads in the perform- 
ance of the useful work they are set to do ! 

At the further end of the plat stands the 
summer-house, — a sort of Pomona's shrine, in 
its way, as well as a moonlight resort for lov- 
ers ; a contorted grape-vine weaving a lattice 
of leaves below and a canopy of green over- 
^ head, whose purple tributes you may sit and 
pluck in the dreamy afternoons of September, 
while the yellow finches are clustering on the 
bushes and the poultry are wallowing in the 
soft garden mould. 

Daybreak, in summer, is a fresh experi- 
ence every morning, in the garden. A good 
deal has been said, good and bad, about the 
glories of that hour on the hill-top and at the 



GARDEN WORK. 43 

riverside ; but in the seclusion of the leafy lit- 
tle patch beside the homestead it is, apparency, 
not so well known. If one only has a garden 
in which to offer salutation to the day-god, he 
has at least one more inducement to get out 
of bed in the dewy hours of the morning. To 
be right in the midst of your own growing 
vegetables ; to behold the favorite sunflowers 
all turned to the east ; to watch the bean- 
sprouts, coming up with their twin leaves out 
of the cleft heart of the seed ; to shave down 
ranks of red-stemmed weeds with a single 
sweep of the bright hoe ; to brush your peas, 
pole your beans, set frames to support your 
cucumbers and tomatoes, trim your young 
hedges, hunt the bugs among the squash vines, 
and plan new paths through beds of vegeta- 
bles and rows of fruit-trees : — this it is to 
.seize a fresh pleasure in the very bloom of its 
freshness, and load the heart with a harvest of 
memories that grow all the more fragrant with 

age- 
Somehow, the poets have linked all the 
pleasant names with the pleasant occupations. 
Therein they have shown themselves to he 
poets. The very word Garden is laden, like 
a wain, with bundles of blossoming associa- 
tions. When men speak of subduing the rug- 



44 HOMESPUN. 

ged wildness of Nature, the phrase goes that 
th^y will make it " beautiful as a garden.''^ In 
gardens live buds and blossonns, along with 
the bees and the sunshine ; and they die there, 
too. They lie close to Home. We step from 
the kitchen door through the garden gate. 
Peaches ripen on their walls; and blooming 
plums drop plump on their mellow soil. Our 
feet loiter in their delightful walks, and the 
atmosphere breathes only contentment and 
peace. 

In gardening, and its cognate associations, 
we get away from the hot fuming of the world 
and go back to the cool and shaded bowers of 
simplicity and truth. We seem to stand with 
uncovered heads in the porch of Nature's great 
temple. We smell savors as fresh as the morn- 
ing dews and as sweet as the breath of the 
rustling corn. There is such a retired, sitch a» 
cool, such a far-off look from the outer world 
to the heart of the garden, that one deplores 
the necessity that takes him away from so 
peaceful a pursuit, and wonders if there may 
not come a time when he shall stay at home 
altogether in his rustic corner, and dress and 
keep his little garden-spot to the end of his 
days. 

When the pale autumn suns fall aslant 



GARDEN WORK. 45 

through the dried stalks, and little flocks of 
birds flutter here and there over the grounds in 
quest of seeds that have burst their pods, and 
tomatoes lie red and glossy among the wilted 
and fallen vines, and bean-pods hang from the 
poles without green leaves to shelter them any 
longer, and slender-waisted wasps find their 
way to the decayed fruits that lie, here and 
there, over the ground, — the thoughts are al- 
lured by every object to the tenderest mood of 
contemplation ; the very atmosphere is full of 
the realization of pleasant dreams. These par- 
ticular days in the garden have charms which 
are not matched even by the glimpses of glory 
furnished in the spring. 

He who loves the home-spot then finds em- 
ployments after his heart's desire. To gather 
and garner -^ to pull the rich roots out of the 
ground where they have waxed fat through a 
whole season's dirty idleness — to get in the 
beans, the peppers, the mangoes, and such 
other vegetables as ripen in seed-vessels — to 
go from garden to barn, from barn to kitchen, 
from kitchen to cellar, and so back to the gar- 
den again, keeps the feelings of the domesti- 
cated man in a state of contented pleasure all 
the while, and renews the ties continually that 
hold him to the home he loves. 



46 HOMESPUN. 

The poultry run in and out before him, and 
the season's chickens delight to wallow in the 
loosened dirt under the lee of the fence, stretch- 
ing their yellow legs in the genial sun. Grand- 
mother's bed of marigolds awaits the clipping 
of her shears, and looks like a shoal of bright 
fish, dyed in the yellow stream of some Pacto- 
lus. As for the rows of sturdy-looking winter 
cabbages, they may stand out awhile through 
the fall frosts, and even get powdered with 
the first light snows of November ; — and the 
growing turkey-poults may peck at the loose 
outside leaves on their way to roost in the 
apple-trees. 

One cannot think of the Spring house-clean- 
ing, without a revived reminiscence of the 
early garden-work, too. The boys are raking 
the rubbish from the grass and the beds, and 
setting fire to it in the piles they have heaped 
up around ; into which the old shoes of the 
past year are thrown as burnt-offerings. The 
girls are at the posies, scratching away like so 
many hens in the high tide of mischief. The 
dog has his nose in every nook, new or old, 
that is to be found. The windows are all 
opened, to let in the genial sun. Bees drive 
across the yards, impatiently foraging for the 
first blossoms. The robins make the air vocal 



GARDEN WORK. 47 

with their welcome calls, and are scouting 
about the plantations for nice places to build 
their nests. The sprouted sprays of the old 
elm on the lawn are pencilled on the ground 
in the sunshine, with the utmost minuteness. 
All about the premises there are the joyous 
sights and sounds of Spring, bringing glad ti- 
dings of the new life that has suddenly broken 
over the world. 

And this is the life of Home. Has the 

whole world any thing to offer that is debased 
with so little alloy ? 

But finest of all, and crown of all the home 
glories, are the roses ; those beautiful children 
of the dews and sun ; clambering in such wild 
riotousness about the porch, and thrusting 
their boquets of red-and-white in at the win- 
dows ; cloudy masses of colors just fetched 
from Paradise, mingled as if in chance drifts, 
and piled against the house like snows against 
the walls in winter ! The little parlor — 
shaded and low — is filled with the breath of 
their very hearts. Through the whole of June, 
the dear old place is a sort of Dreamland. In 
the most brilliant colorings of oriental tales — 
in the dreamiest pictures of islands in the 
southern seas, nothing so satisfies the imagina- 
tion and the heart as the luxuriant rose-vines, 



48 HOMESPUN. 

bossed from root to crown with glories of buds 
and blossoms ; lavishing their sweet lives on 
the happiness of those who dwell contentedly 
at home ; and conjuring up for soul and sense, 
through the magic of color and perfume, ideal 
scenes that line the roadways of life with 
banks of ravishing fragrance and bowers of 
beauty without end. 

The Rose is the Angel of the Garden ; 

and one can therefore readily comprehend 
what the poet Gray meant when he exclaimed 
— " Happy they who can create a Kose ! " Sir 
Henry Wotton wrote of it, in his verses "On 
his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia," — 

" You Violets that first appear, 

By your pure purple mantles known, 
Like the proud virgins of the year, 
As if the Spring were all your own, — 
What are you when the Rose is blown ? " 




SUNDAY IN TEE COUNTBT, 

OF the almost silent delights of this one day 
out of the seven, those who persistently 
dwell in the cities know little or nothing. The 
few whom the heat or the fashion drives forth 
into still country neighborhoods for two or three 
weeks each summer, carry back with them but 
a half-notion of the Country Sunday as it is, — 
albeit they are as fond of talking about it as if 
they were as steady to meeting as the deacons 
themselves. It is a clear mistake to suppose 
that one little foray into the country, every 
summer, is going to supply a requisite idea of 
ordinary country matters : — a man may as 
well make his choice of a house by sample. 

That sort of country life which neighbors 
upon the cities, whose sober warp is shot daily 
with the gay woof of town travel, is not the 
]ife I am speaking of now ; in the quiet rural 
retirement where I write, I hear no roar of car 
wheels or shrill whoop of the steam-whistle 

even in the distance. I fail to see glittering 
4 



mi^ 



50 HOMESPUN. 

turn-outs on their way to church, to upset the 
sober heads of such as gather on the village 
Green. The charm of it is, the country at no 
time loses its real country character. The 
Sunday morning air is as tranquil, and in sum- 
mer as redolent, as the poets all say it was in 
Eden. You can hear mellow bells calling one 
to another from hill-top to hill-top, their echoes 
tripping across the intervening meadows as 
lightly as tricksy Ariel. Men, women and 
children are starched up in their very cleanest 
and best. An open wagon, stiffly set on the 
old-fashion " thorough-braces," comes as near 
to a coupe, chariotee, or barouche as you 
can ordinarily discover. Everybody is plain, 
homely, and remarkably sober. Everybody 
travels the lengthening roads to meeting be- 
cause, primarily, it is a duty, and not merely a 
sentiment, or the fashion. Underneath a fixed 
rigidity their hard, dry humor is effectually cov- 
ered up ; and only at the noon intermission of 
an hour, — behind the meeting-house, perhaps, 
or just around the next corner, or tucked away 
in the half-shadows of the horse-sheds, — do 
the men dare to relax their muscles from the 
set Sunday g^-imness, and give way to an out- 
break of humor at best almost as sickly as the 
sun seen through a bit of smoked glass. 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 61 

There are, to be sure, some interior villages 
all along the lines of the railroads, that hold 
up their heads on a Sunday with a good deal 
of pert pretension ; but these cannot deny, if 
they would, that they are still fastened by the 
umbilical cord to the city systems and customs. 
Such are not — mind you — your genuine 
country villages, that have from the start set 
up housekeeping for themselves, " do " their 
own washing and ironing, and cut and make 
their own clothes. If one desires to see and 
enjoy the real country Sunday, he must go off 
beyond city reach altogether. 

In New England, these choice places that I 
am talking of may still be found in plenty, cut 
up as the surface of the country is with rail- 
roads ; but you cannot expect to see them by 
merely looking out of a flying car window. 
They are to be sought, and not stumbled upon. 
If you once start out on foot, almost any 
crooked by-road will beguile you towards 
them with certainty. 

In the summer time, when the sun gets up 
and looks in at the east windows, not far from 
half-past four o'clock of a Sunday morning, 
the good farmer-folk bestir themselves right 
early. In place of setting the pitcher in the 
dingy area for the milk-and-water man, they 



52 HOMESPUN. 

turn out to fill their own frothy pails as soon, 
certainly, as sunrise, and send off the dewy- 
coated cows to pasture again. The children 
are all brought up to the kitchen sink, and 
scrubbed and rubbed till they take on a shine 
like new furniture. Pretty soon old aunts slip 
out into the garden and snap off a spike or two 
of lilac blossoms from the bush close by the 
gate, which they stick into broken-nosed pitch- 
ers about the mantels and hearth. The farmers 
themselves, in snowy shirt-sleeves, are every- 
where about the barns, greasing up the wagon 
wheels, tinkering at the harnesses, and indulg- 
ing in a general fuss of preparation for the 
hour of meeting. 

Not a home in the whole breadth of quiet 
landscape but is at that moment all ready to 
send forth its own swarm. And the white 
wooden meeting-house is big enough to collect 
and hold them all safely together. 

Breakfast being done, and the children hav- 
ing taken off their long tires, a tedious spell — 
to them — intervenes till church time. Where 
the family is a pious and well-ordered one, the 
restless young folks are seated around the room 
in a silent circle, generally with Testaments in 
their hands ; and there they keep them fast, sit- 
ting stiffly, primly, and uncomfortably, until the 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 53 

hour comes laggingly around. No matter if a 
golden-ringed bumblebee does fly in at the open 
window ; or a lady butterfly shakes the yellow 
dust from the velvet of her gorgeous cloak, 
just over the window-sill ; or a bird comes and 
sings on a low bough hard by, to let the boys 
feel how unspeakably joyous outdoor liberty 
must be, of a Sunday morning : — there must 
they sit all in a row, with faces as rigid as the 
copies of Miles Standish's, and spirits crowded 
back into the pit of youthful despair, till the old 
clock in the corner rings out ten, and perhaps 
a little while after. 

After the country wagons begin to stir the 
dust on the roads, they do not stop to let it 
settle again. One family party close behind 
another ; a white horse pulling up behind a red 
one, and a lean beast chasing after a pot-bellied 
one ; a loitering line of sturdy young fellows, 
honest and lusty, whose necks and hands have 
been tanning all the week in the hot corn-fields ; 
now two maidenly women in bonnets to match 
their years, — now a hobbling old man who is 
not able to keep a horse, turning about all the 
while to let the wagons pass him ; girls crowded 
in on the back seats at the cost of much of the 
starch in their Sunday attire ; — these are the 
sights that give a new face, on that day, to the 



54 HOMESPUN. 

landscape. You see nothing like it near the 
cities ; you would hardly think that such pic- 
tures could be sketched from life anywhere. 

Almost every country meeting-house has a 
plat of green grass before and around it ; and, 
occasionally, a few trees, — old elms, or vigor- 
ous growing maples. Commonly, too, a sign- 
post, — the magnet for knots of men before servi- 
ces open within, whereon they attentively study 
the probate, town, and society's proclamations. 

It is painfully clear that nobody feels at his 
ease in his Sunday clothes ; the efforts to ap- 
pear so only make the fact more apparent. 
This one is in a sorry state of doubt about the 
best place for his hands, and you guess he 
wishes he could have left them at home. That 
one puts little faith in his feet, thrusting forth 
first one and then the other, as if they were in 
conspiracy to play him false and let him down. 
A third betrays his slight personal acquaint- 
ance with the hat he wears that day, continu- 
ally tipping it back and pulling it forward 
upon his head. Still another goes around 
offering his hand to everybody, as if he thought 
there must be some magic in the town's palms. 
The uneasiest and unhappiest one of all laughs 
when he catches anybody else laughing, though 
he can give no sort of reason why he should. 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 55 

If one of the other sex chances to pass him on 
her way in, he begins with throwing a glance 
at her sneakishly, and ends with a square and 
courageous turn-about, studying the motions 
of her shoes till they take her up the steps and 
out of his sight 

And they will show just as sober over these 
matters as if none could be more serious 
among the concerns of the world. But then, 
their humor is sober, and hard, and bald, even 
on week-days ; they do not give it stretch and 
play by social contact ; and hence their Sun- 
day spirits are dashed with a kind of gloom it 
would be a hard matter to describe. Why 
this is really so, — why Sunday and a dejected 
countenance should so regularly come together 
in rustic experience, I am sure mine is not the 
gift to divine. One would think it ought to 
be just otherwise. To know a visible God in 
the new blessing of the morning sunshine, in 
the dense and cool shadows of the trees, in the 
meadows, spread with their carpets of living 
green, and in the broad fields of corn with 
their ten thousand lances tilting in the early 
breeze ; to catch His benignant smile break- 
ing out over the hill-sides, over the crests of the 
rolling tree-tops, and in the far-off blue of the 
heavens ; to hear His voice in every one of the 



66 HOMESPUN. 

sounds of air and earth, and to feel profoundly 
the influence of His presence, like that of the 
very atmosphere, all around you, — this is 
what Sunday might be to every man that 
lives, and what it surely ought to be ; and this 
it will be, too, when we awake to the visions 
which a truly spiritual life scatters so plenti- 
fully around us. 

As / look at such matters, nothing 

sweeter, or purer, m* more delicious to a simple 
soul, can be conceived than the unaffected 
singing of a Country Choir. There is so little 
scientific fuss and professional palaver about 
it. And the melodies come out so full and 
clear, — a creation each by itself, rising and 
falling in its cadences like the steady swell of 
the sea ! I know few things, for myself, more 
true and hearty. There stands the choral row, 
male and female, heads erect and mouths 
opened wide, letting out souls and voices to- 
gether; the fiddle squeaking with excitement 
to get the lead, and the hard-working chorister, 
with quick eye thrown to one side and the 
other, actually singing down the whole! As 
for the melody itself, — so simple and direct, 
so plaintive, so stirring, filling the house as with 
a flood from floor to ceiling, and drifting out 
through the opened doors and windows into 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY, 57 

the echoing street, — it is enough to move the 
most worldly heart that ever tried to mint it- 
self into money. One hardly thinks he catches 
such seraphic strains again, though he goes all 
the way from New England to Rome. 

Then, too, a genuine country parson's ser- 
mon is nothing like a city clergyman's dis- 
course ; and if you go into the interior to hear 
one, you must not expect to find it so. Not 
generally is much attention paid to verbal tac- 
tics, or to rhetorical ornaments, or to brilliancy 
of metaphor. The people who listen want 
about so much plain talk, and so much old- 
fashion, hammer-and-tongs logic ; as for the 
rest, it is all " leather and prunella." In truth, 
I grieve to tell that a good many of the pul- 
pits, in this last respect, have grown to be hardly 
better than scolding-blocks. Some of the men- 
hearers sit in their shirt-sleeves, in downright 
hot weather, and some are drowsing and nod- 
ding as if in Elysium already. The sixthlies, 
lastlies, and finallies come along after the for- 
mer fashion, and find them,, as the Master 
found the disciples of old time, fast asleep. 
Even the preacher, banging the dust with such 
zeal out of the faded cushion, is not able 
to shatter or scatter their soothing Sabbath 
dreams. Poor brethren ! they are guilty of no 



58 HOMESPUN. 

sort of fault ; so very hard has been their work 
in the week's open air, when they come to sit 
down in close meeting on Sunday, it is the 
easiest matter in the world to fall asleep ! So 
sweet must that sleep always be ; — how dare 
any self-righteous looker-on, with his mind off 
the sermon, say it is an ungodly one ! 

The children lay their heads in their moth- 
ers' laps, and shortly forget who they are or 
why they came. The women — some of them 
— nibble somewhat slyly at bunches of fennel 
and dill, glance down on their slumbering off- 
spring, and fall to a fresh survey of one an- 
other. In the galleries, the larger boys spread 
themselves over the seats and benches, and be- 
guile the heavy hour with studying the faces 
of the congregation below, or watching for the 
last leaf of the lengthening sermon. Out-of- 
doors, the horses stamp resentfully under the 
sting of summer flies, and, now and then, a 
motherly old mare sends forth a shrill whinny 
for the young colt that followed her from 
manger to meeting. If, now, a stranger, en- 
tirely unused to such scenes, could be taken 
up bodily out of the noisy world and dropped 
into a spot like this, it would impress him with 
such a sentiment as Sabbath never left upon 
his heart before. He would almost be driven 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 59 

to wonder where he had been, and what he 
had been doing, all his days, that he had never 
yet learned to " keep " Sunday as it ought to 
be kept indeed. 

A long time after service, you may see 

persons strolling up and down the street, talk- 
ing in low and subdued voices. The air holds, 
as Gray says, a " solemn stillness." The vane 
on the meeting-house steeple seems to swim 
in the sky. Swallows are cleaving the air in 
chase of evening insects, and emitting that 
quick " chip-chip " of a cry which is all they 
have to offer for an evening song. Boys — 
barefoot now, but otherwise in their " Sunday 
best " still — come driving home a cow or two 
apiece from the near pastures. About their 
back doors women are making ready for their 
next day's washing, setting tubs and pails 
where they will be handiest in the early morn- 
ing. So silent are the untravelled country 
roads now, streaked with tracks of green grass 
as they are, and ruled in with stone walls all 
spattered with mosses, — the soothing delight 
of loitering over them at this contemplative 
hour can be described by a comparison with 
no other known to the worshipful heart. 

But this is the summer picture. In 

winter, matters take on a sensible change. 



60 HOMESPUN. 

In the first place, it is noticeable enough that 
it makes all the difference whether the earth 
wears a garment of grass or a white robe of 
snow. Next, it is sleighs, instead of wagons, 
that bring the good farmers' families over to 
meeting, whose styles are as varied as the 
dates on which ambitious workmen gave them 
a launch into travelling existence. Green 
sleighs and yellow ones, — high backs and 
low, — cutters and pungs, — they slip along 
over the smooth road with a living freight full 
as miscellaneous as the conveyances them- 
selves are oddly assorted. The girls and boys 
are passionately fond of this mode of travel, 
whether it is Sunday or not. Brighter than 
the shining of the snow upon the ground is 
the sparkle of their eyes. The jingle of the 
straps of deep-toned bells around the horses' 
necks and bellies, wakes them as thoroughly 
as the fife and drum at May training. 

It is a point of horsemanship with every 
young fellow who brings a girl along to meet- 
ing with him, to " cut a dash " or execute some 
sort of '• curly Q " with his steed, as he drives 
him up before the door ; and the serious antics 
of some of the venerable old plough-horses, 
coming up to the steps with curbed neck and 
tossing tails, 'are enough to crimson even a 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 61 

jaundiced face with laughter. There in the 
sleigh-box, how snug and cosily they are 
squeezed together under the shaggy robes ! 
What an expression — half apology and half 
bluster — the gallant young reinsman wears 
on his face, as he proceeds to hand out his 
lady with such a substantial jump upon the 
steps I Behold I — alas, poor human nature! 
— the less fortunate wights who stand around, 
nudging one another in a sort of jealous deris- 
ion, and making almost superhuman efforts to 
feel that they would not be concerned in that 
kind of business for half the entire town, — 
girls and all ! 

Through the forenoon services, no greater 
discomfort can be imagined than to have to sit 
in a corner furthest from the stove ; but by 
afternoon, the blue chill wears away a little. 
Still, a fan in one's hand would be not much 
more than a vain ornament even then. Many 
straggle off to huddle close about the hot 
stove, where they complete the work of baking 
their heads, acquire red and heavy eyes, and 
discover that the discourse from the pulpit is a 
V7orld too deep for them. The rising winter 
wind blows from every side against the old 
structure, straining its venerable joints and 
racking its whole frame in resistance ; now it 



62 HOMESPUN. 

goes whistling through the crevices of the mul- 
tiplied windows in a merry tune, and now it 
falls to scolding and howling like a fury to 
protest that it will not be shut out. 

In the evening — for country folk keep Sat- 
urday rather than Sunday night — the beaux 
are about, furnished with horses and sleighs, 
bells and all. They do their courting on Sun- 
day evenings only, and on alternate weeks at 
that ; but they make their hours so late that 
they could well afford to crowd the two even- 
ings into one. With all their natural flow 
of spirits, a more serious class of acquaintances, 
when out on these agreeable excursions, no 
rustic young lady could lay claim to ; brave 
enough, they may be, on ordinary occasions, 
but at these particular times the very bashful- 
lest of cowards. And the girls sit and wait so 
impatiently for the ring of the bells, — for do 
you suppose they cannot distinguish even the 
sound of the bells about the necks of their 
lover's horses ? They have made up a bright 
fire in the " keeping room " on purpose, and are 
bringing their feelings into a state of as high 
effervescence as the acquaintance will allow. 
Do you ask if they feel the cold in that rarely 
opened room ? They would not feel a chill if 
there were no fire there at all. Something 



SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY. 63 

very different it is, that makes their cheeks 
flush, and their necks show so deep a red. 

The rest of the family go to bed earlier on 
Sunday night than on any other in the week ; 
their plan is, to start fair and square with the 
next morning. One never hears of Blue Mon- 
days among such people. If they must be 
thought blue at all, let it by all means be on 
the Sundays. On that night they wind their 
eight-day clocks, just like the old clock in 
Shandy Hall, — those tall, high-shouldered 
time-keepers that stand in square entries and 
upon so many broad stairs. The " meetin' 
clothes " of the children are laid away for an- 
other week, and the old ones got out again. 
Kindlings are split and piled ready to fire up 
on the moiTow, and big armfuls of oak, and 
ash, and hickory, are placed handy to the 
hearth and stoves. 

Upon the steady-going, industrious 

farmer of the North and East the influence of 
the recurring Sabbaths is incalculably good and 
lasting. If any one needs repose more than an- 
other, it is he. The mechanic of the large cities 
may rebuild his shattered energies with a jaunt 
up the river or down the bay ; but even this sort 
of exhilaration has a far different quality from 
that which calms the nerves, cools the blood, 



64 HOMESPUN. 

and equalizes the spirits of the sober country 
farmer. On that one day, he pauses once 
more to consider : — wife and children about 
him, horses and cattle enjoying their rest, and 
he the head and lord of the whole domestic es- 
tablishment, — he is almost conscious of being' 
a patriarch in the land, and his character looms 
quite grand and columnar in the social land- 
scape. 

The fury and fuss of some Sundays else- 
where are in sharp enough contrast with one 
of these blessed Sabbaths in the country. 
From the still hour when the sun begins to 
redden the east, the whole roll of the hours is 
holy in the contemplation. All objects seem 
to be clothed in a special Sunday attire, — to 
look one in the face, as it were, and silently 
say, " It is Sunday." The people without ex- 
ception dress themselves tidily and with pecul- 
iar care, from genuine respect for the Day it- 
self. Children are held in wholesome, though 
often in rigid restraint, for the same reason. 
The very procession of the hours seems slow 
and solemn, and men's faces wear longer as- 
pects, — not as deceitful masks at all, but only 
out of a decent and ingrained regard for the 
character and associations of the Day. 




EUCKLEBEBBYING. 

T CANNOT help thinking that the boy who 
-^ comes to manhood without knowing some- 
thing of the simple and healthy pleasures of 
the Huckleberry Pasture, is hardly as sweet or 
whole a man for the unlucky omission. Be- 
cause I believe in my heart that this same 
huckleberry field — like many simple gratifica- 
tions that cost nothing and are little thought 
of at the time — is a real pasture- land for the 
spirit of the boy, whereon it feeds with an 
eagerness not paralleled by that of any of the 
experiences which come afterward. 

Of the recurring delights of the summer- 
time, this one of huckleberrying assuredly be- 
longs at the top of the list. It blossoms all 
over with the dearest associations, which have 
their countless fine roots in the very being ; 
and these associations grow, too, along with 
the growth of the youthful heart. Neither cir- 
cumstance nor years impair them ; they only 
acquire a new freshness with the lapse of time. 

5 



66 HOMESPUN. 



It is a secret pleasure of mine to sit and 



call up again, in musing mood, those happy 
days when a half dozen of us boys just out of 
s^chool used to take our baskets and pails, and 
tramp off a couple of long and dusty miles 
over a country road for a summer day's huckle- 
berry in g. We were in the habit of foraging 
for this delicious wild fruit in some pastures 
that belonged to a kind and honest man — 
rest his soul ! — w^ho was known to us only as 
" Uncle Elisha." I well remember the easy 
gait we struck, when we came near the long 
and winding lane that led to the good man's 
little brown one-and-a-half story house, and 
the gay, childish snatches we shouted, rather 
than sang, as w^e trudged along the cart-path 
across the pastures on our way home again. 
The wide-spreading chestnut-tree down, in the 
very bottom of the meadow bowl, stands out 
green and hospitably umbrageous before me 
now, its lowest limbs kindly holding for us the 
baskets and pails that carried our frugal din- 
ners. Ah, what a matchless sauce was that 
which our voracious appetites supplied us with 
then ! I see, too, the very bower by the road- 
side, made by the wild grape-vine that had 
seized hold of a promising young apple-tree 
and compelled it to stand still for the better dis- 



HUCKLEBERRYING. 67 

play of its own leafy contortions ; — the same 
vine next that moss-spattered stone wall, in 
whose sequestered shadows we all loved to 
huddle on our return home at sundown. 

I remember just as well, too, how we used 
to lay the woolly mullein leaves over the glossy 
berries we had picked, and secure them with 
little twigs of the huckleberry bush, placed in 
the form of squares, and triangles, and octa- 
gons, and stars. The old bars to the pasture, 
of which there were two pairs, and the last of 
which, at the head of the lane, we had to 
climb, were a w^elcome landmark as we came 
trooping up out of the berry field ; and, next 
to these, I may truly say, was the low roof of 
the house of " Uncle Elisha," and the* well- 
sweep that always seemed to me to be poised 
in the air above it. Up along through that 
same old lane, our young feet trod a carpet 
whose like they will never walk over any- 
where again ; — Wiltons and Axminsters may 
not be named with that thick and verdant turf 
which received them w-ith so soft a pressure, 
after the long day's tramping among the rocks, 
bushes, and brambles of the berry pasture. 
Occasionally, too, we used to get a drink of 
new milk at that same brown house ; and it is 
very certain that, at such times, our industri- 



68 HOMESPUN. 

ous field-service was duly paraded before the 
eyes of the generous giver, basket after basket. 
Looking through the vista of memory to the 
figure of " Uncle Elisha's " wife, as she stood 
in that low back-door with a bumper of sweet 
milk for us in her hand, I can endorse every 
syllable the traveller Ledyard so truly says 
about Woman, and do it with an enthusiasm 
entirely unaffected. 

There was still another field to which 

we rambled on these fragrant summer-day ex- 
cursions. Three good miles distant was that, 
and to reach it we had to cross a long, covered 
toll-bridge. The little light that showed us 
our way across came in through the wide- 
apart and narrow windows cut, like loop-holes, 
in its sides, at which we used to stop and look 
down with a strange fascination into the swift 
current of the water. My conscience will 
never fully acquit me, I fear, of the guilt of 
having run that toll of a penny on many an 
occasion. The bridge was tended then by a 
brother of the revered and scholarly man, since 
gone to his heavenly rest, who afterwards 
turned me off his hands, declaring me fit for 
college. That occurred to me once as a 
strange coincidence somehow : in the haste 
and hubbub of this age of great things, the 



HUCKLEBERRYING. 69 

world would not think it worth naming. The 
lot itself, that lay a couple of long miles east- 
erly from this bridge, went by the name of 
" Marsh Lot ; " we used to speculate not a lit- 
tle among ourselves, why some people pre- 
ferred to call it mash lot. 

There was a story-and-a-half red house 
standing on the bleak knoll that commanded a 
view of it ; and not a window, front or rear, 
but was " trimmed " with contrasting white 
paint. It is my purpose to go, some day, ex- 
pressly to see if that bleak red house is yet 
standing ; and then I may ramble again — but 
this time it will be without the old time com- 
panions — over the old huckleberry pasture, 
too, and suffer my heart to cry out, though in 
vain, for those it loved like its own self in those 
halcyon days of existence. I shall look up 
with wonder, no doubt, at trees which were 
spindling saplings then, and find low boughs, 
on which we used to hang our baskets and 
pails, now grown into the air above my head. 

Since those days. Fortune has kindly led 
my feet into quite as pleasant paths elsewhere ; 
where just as many berries grew, and just as 
much mullein abounded ; and these new pas- 
tures have lacked nothing in the world to make 
them as dear to me as the old ones, save the 
fragrance of the boyish associations. 



70 HOMESPUN. 

One of these stretches back just across a 
noisy little river with a pretty Indian name — 
The Natchaug : hemmed about, on the north 
and the south, with a thrifty growth of wood ; 
of extremely irregular surface ; and sloping, 
where it does not pitch, down to the rocky bed 
of the riotous stream. 

Another lot there was — a distant pasture- 
land — which we reached after a good three- 
mile ride over any but smooth or level roads ; 
high set and breezy ; studded and bossed with 
old trees that stood far apart ; and seamed 
with moist dells where the grass grew greener 
than anywhere else around. One day I cer- 
tainly recall now, that went calmly by with 
me in this lonely huckleberry pasture, so sweet 
and pure in the light of a clear iriendship, so 
full of the music of birds and wild bees, the 
bleating of sheep and low tinkle of cow-bells, 
that I often think earth and heaven must have 
kindly combined their influences, even some 
time before, to produce that particular day for 
my heart's everlasting remembrance. 

It is as much an art to go a-huckleber- 

rying as to make a sketch or a picture. In the 
first instance, one must feel himself in the right 
temper, since a spirit of inharmony spoils all, 
if it is allowed to get the upper hand ; and that 



HUCKLEBERRYING. 71 

temper is to the last degree one of placidity 
and contemplativeness. You go straight to 
the wrong place, if you start for one of these 
nooks in Nature with a hot heart, or a fuming 
brain, and expect to meet with sympathizing 
circumstances. It is the last of places for 
unrest or ambition, if they go for any thing but 
more wretchedness. 

The good home-folk take along baskets and 
birch-measures on their arms, and stroll lei' 
surely off through lanes that are lined with the 
dense black alders, and down streaked cart- 
paths, and across patches of woodland, until 
thev come face to face with the inevitable 
Bars ; and by their moderate and almost indo- 
lent gait, one would suppose they dwelt in a 
realm where leisure was the law, and the high- 
est energy of life was covered up with these 
abounding poetic similitudes. They walk with 
such an apparent freedom from all care, so that 
you would say their thoughts hung as heed- 
lessly about 'them as their garments, that the 
whole landscape becomes peopled thereafter 
with the beautiful spiritual images which they 
excite. 

All hands rendezvous at the Bars, the larger 
waiting for the little ones. This is the point 
of departure for all. Here the baskets and 



72 HOMESPUN. 

bark measures are distributed, each one taking 
what represents his expertness and industry as 
a berry-gatherer. The favored younglings as- 
sume each his or her allotted stent, and go 
their noisy way over or between the bars, to re- 
ceive such impressions on their young hearts 
as will last them for a whole lifetime. 

Generally, too, a few stray geese are to be 
seen straggling near the border wall, whose 
depredations on the fruit of the pastures are 
much greater than one who had not observed 
for himself would think possible. Or a pair of 
steady old oxen, turned out to graze and re- 
cruit, their necks relieved of the burdensome 
yoke, look up from their odorous bites in the 
yet dewy grass, as if they would ask what 
means this vociferous invasion. So early in 
the morning, a thrush is to be heard in the top 
of the birch hard by, caroling forth the joy his 
little breast knows not how to hold, and, it is 
like, offering all comers a gay welcome to the 
ecstasies of his own liberty. A singing spar- 
row, or perhaps a bustling little yellow-poll 
answers in the copse that hides the hill-side 
spring, and straightway the whole slope is a 
series of songful cascades. 

Now they fall every one to his work, — for it 
is work indeed that they make of it, — and it 



HUCKLEBERRYING. 73 

is right here in the open air, canopied with the 
bare blue of heaven, the free summer winds 
playing ever so gently over the face, and the 
singing of birds and music of waters pouring 
their lulling current over the soul, that the 
berry-pickers chat as they work and work while 
they chat, fingers not a whit busier than 
tongues and both as busy as they can be, even 
their gay gossip becoming instantly purified in 
this most unworldly of all spots on earth, and, 
every hour, unconsciously drinking in those in- 
fluences whose strength they cannot measure 
now, but which they will, at some other time, 
come to hold the most precious of all in their 
history. 

Thus sprinkled over a berry pasture, a party 
of rustic pickers presents so striking a scene, 
the wonder is that no home artist, drawing in- 
spiration from the very scents of our New 
England soil, ever thought to transfer it to his 
canvas and glorify it with the hues of his own 
imagination. It abounds with some of the 
most picturesque points to be found in the still 
home life of the country. 

As fast as the little ones fill their meas- 
ures, they trudge to the tree in whose shade 
are ranged their baskets and pails, and proceed 
with all deliberateness to " empty ; " announc- 



74 HOMESPUN. 

ing, in shrill shouts, how full they have at 
this stage filled them. Gallants go off forag- 
ing, and come back with armfuls of broken 
bushes for the girls in the shade, with whom 
they sit down to pick and talk and frolic ; and 
a marvellous lot of jolly chat it is, too, at these 
same little* trees in the open huckleberry field. 
The heaps of withered bushes will surely be- 
tray these cosy gatherings under the trees to 
any one who finds and laments them, the 
summer after. 

What a sweet and savory feast is the frugal 
lunch at noon I — eaten out in the air thus, 
and under. trees that kindly catch and sprinkle 
down all the straggling breezes ; washed down 
with water freshly fetched by the younger ones 
from the hill-side spring, that tastes of the cool 
earth out of whose bosom it was pressed. 
Even the delicious luncheons of the hay-field 
are surpassed for famous flavors and surround- 
ing fragrance by this. At that hour, the day's 
stent has been advanced so far as to make it 
pretty clear what each one's performance is to 
be. They take this particular time to compare 
notes; and now the smartest picker — who is, 
of course, the stillest one, — receives the gen- 
eral praise without a thought of envy. The 
glossy black trophies in the basket are beau- 



HUCKLEBERRYING. 76 

tiful to feast the eyes upon ; it does not seem 
possible that this rocky and brambly old pas- 
ture has yielded fruit in such abundance, and 
of flavors of such surpassing delicacy. By this 
time, likewise, all faces are well browned by 
the wind and sun of August, so that the little 
party seated under the hickory might be mis- 
taken for a camp of strolling gypsies. 

And afterward, as the long afternoon hours 
stretch on towards the sunset, what low and 
sad cadences of song fall on the sensitive hear- 
ing from little birds that domicil in the open 
pastures. One feathered throat perseveringly 
counsels all who take the trouble to listen, to 
" drink your tea — drink your tea ! " — as if 
any possible decoction from over the seas could 
be better than the limpid drink brewed in the 
enclosure of this very home-lot! The harsh 
clangor of the geese, getting ready to take up 
their late afternoon march for a night on the 
bare ground under the corn-barn, strikes a dif- 
ferent scale of associations ; and the dull and 
regular stroke of the cow-beU, monotonous 
campanile that it is, another still; and yet a 
different one, the extempore warble of the 
robin in a wild cherry-tree near the wall; and 
yet another, the bark of a distant watch -dog, 
whose echoes seem to gather even a sort of 



76 HOMESPUN. 

melody, like the winding horn of the hunter, as 
they came circling across the still lake of the 
summer air. And all these sounds commingle 
mysteriously with other sounds, and again 
with one another, so that in such a place and 
at such an hour, the sensitive and contempla- 
tive soul lapses into a mood of the profoundest 
worship. 

Trudging thoughtfully home again at night- 
fall, the sun throwing level beams across the 
landscape and lodging them in the tops of the 
trees, and the shadows deepening in the grassy 
lanes and damp lowland reaches, it rises in 
every one's thought that this one day out in 
the pastures has been the crown of all the days 
of the year. Not often does it indeed come 
round, whole and entire like this, in a single 
season ; but still it holds its fixed place, like 
the sweet Pleiades in the heavens, in the calen- 
dar of every passing year. 

Jaded and fagged, unable to go one step 
further, almost reeling and stumbling into the 
house, the excursionists finally bring in their 
berries and set them down on the table, and 
are ready for bed as soon as they have eaten 
their frugal supper. 

Is there sweet sleep dispensed for the blessed 
anointing of mortal lids, by any of " the drowsy 



HUCKLEBEER YING. 



T7 



syrups of the world," like this which rests on 
the spirits of the tired huckleberry party ? 

Can even childhood throw itself into the 
arms of the drowsy god with a perfecter trust 
in his ability to bless with the single blessing 
it is too weary to ask for ? 





BABN LIFE, 

IT is the man of the high latitudes chiefly, 
who strives to domesticate his sentiments 
and give them a genuine home expression. The 
inhabitant of Constantinople does not seek a 
like realization of his desires with the native of 
the Swiss Valley, or of the green slopes of Eng- 
lish Kent. The dweller among the breezy 
New England hills nurses a very different sen- 
timent concerning Home from his congener 
around the bayous of Louisiana, or more 
directly under the suns of the tropics. Hence 
the Northern house wears another aspect, and 
has entirely distinct belongings from that of 
any other latitude and location. The climatic 
needs being peculiar, the sentiment that springs 
out of them must, perforce, correspond. 

May it not be accepted as an universal truth, 
that the love of Home exists nowhere, and is 
incapable of actual expression, except it is first 
caught wild from Nature, and shut down under 
ridge-poles and sheltering eaves and roofs ? Is 



BARN LIFE. 79 

attachment to home best bred in caves and 
dens ? Can Nomads be called home-loving ? 
or Crowfeet and Flatheads know by experience 
of the domestic sentiments and virtues ? 

With the Home goes the Barn ; that is a 
matter altogether of course. Hovels do not 
require barns as domestic complements ; but 
Homes, with low roofs and broad hearths, do. 
The Barn is as much an object of interest as 
the dwelling, and the life that swarms and is 
sheltered in the one bears very close relation- 
ship to that which hives in the other. The 
good husbandman who fodders his sheep and 
cattle within the snug enclosures of his barn 
near home, grows more attached to them than 
if he merely knew they were browsing miles 
off in the woods, or straggling without aim 
across vast prairie lands, and here and there 
pulling at exposed hay-stacks. This love, too, 
becomes a personal affair, and, by its operation, 
the profounder love of locality and home is 
fixed and developed. If the man of New Eng- 
land migrates, it is only for better land and, 
therefore, a better Home ; but the man of Ten- 
nessee and Mississippi moves farther on, that 
he may own a thousand Acres, in lieu of his 
present three hundred. 

It is a fair study of the growth of sentiment 



80 HOMESPUN. 

and taste, to look about the country and see 
how farmers place their barns ; they may be 
estimated pretty well by so slight a token. I 
can go and put my hand on many and many 
a broad barn-door, that discloses an interior 
view pat before the home windows. Concern- 
ing the use and value of barns, their honest 
owners hold the right idea^ but happen to be 
lamentably deficient in taste; and, no doubt, 
would frankly admit that they cared not a wisp 
of hay about it. They assume — what is true 
— that the barn is the workshop of the farm 
establishment, where all labor and profit begins 
and ends ; and hence, like men who love their 
money-bags best of all things, they want the 
workshop where they can see it ; and even per- 
mit the tyrannical sense of smell to become 
subordinate, where it should have its way un- 
challenged. Then, too, they would have their 
place of business as handy to the door as may 
be ; like the shoemaker, with his plaything of 
a shop right in the L of his house, — or the 
doctor, whose instruments, jars, and saddle- 
bags lie kicking about like ordinary household 
trumpery. 

There are two sorts of barns, now-a-days; 
the Commercial, and the Picturesque. Mechi, 
of London, writes overpoweringly of the for- 



BARN LIFE. 81 

mer, with their famous plank floors and still 
more famous stall-feds, quite confusing you 
with the rattle of his estimates and figures; 
the latter are the barns — and the only ones, 
too — you will find in artists' landscapes, who 
study, not cent, per cent., but the most striking 
natural expression. It is these barns only, that 
deserve place in the landscape ; it is these that 
children love to play in, on Saturday after- 
noons, and old men wander over with hands 
thoughtfully crossed behind them. These are 
the barns that rise to the imagination, on read- 
ing of Shakspeare's 

" rich leas 

Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and peas ; 

Of turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, 

And flat meads, thatched with stover, them to keep." 

These, where the bleat of young spring calves 
becomes musical, — and sly old hens hide up 
nests full of eggs, — and summer swallows twit- 
ter under the dark eaves in swarming colonies, 
— and the big doors swing in the wind with a 
rusty creak, so sad that it finally tempers itself 
in the heart to a real pleasure. 

The commercial barns, the barns of mere 
business, with stately cupolas that screen prin- 
ciples of ventilation, — with paint, and blinds, 
and lightning-rod, and an equine vane, — elab- 

6 



'82 HOMESPUN. 

orate with brand-new bins, and stalls, and pine- 
smelling floors, — such barns as these are not 
in pictures, are not of Homespun, are not the 
old brown barns that men and children love, 
and are sure to love as long as they live. 
Somehow, — though it is all natural enough, 
— our friends of the brush and palette catch 
the tru-e hints and points ; it must be on Fal- 
stafF's principle of " instinct " : — and they 
are careful never to spoil canvas with either 
white barns or new ones. They go straight 
even to a dilapidated structure, with sagging 
doors and billowy roof, passing by such as 
merely cost and make money. Thus poverty 
has its charm, which must pass for one of its 
compensations ; for poverty is ever picturesque 
in Nature. 

I look about for barns that provoke most 
human sentiment, not those it took the most 
money to build. Such are the barns that go 
with the dwelling, and are not set off as objects 
for glancing admiration. Such as these are 
not the barns that are esteemed better than the 
houses their owners live in. These are low- 
roofed, and rambling. They abound with shelf- 
like scaffolds and irregular stairs, with cunning 
nooks and secreted shadows. They are prima- 
rily for service, like the men on whose shoulders 



BARN LIFE. 33 

the world rests ; and therefore they are unpre- 
tending, and wear conamon clothes. In their 
warm shelter crowd Juno-eyed oxen, ruminant 
in the twilight of the place, or rustling fresh 
tumbles of the sweet hay. Their floors are 
broad, and have been soundly whipped with 
old-fashioned flails ; and their bays are both 
deep and capacious. You can see the clear 
sky light pricking through the brown shingles, 
and sprinkling the whole hay-mow with its 
cerulean showers ; as if it would fain follow 
the red-top and timothy even into their winter 
quarters. 

I love to hunt hens'-nests in the hay, as well 
as the youngest child that can climb old stairs 
or straddle dizzy cross-beams and rafters. The 
clucking jades, with their strong family instinct, 
manage to discover the cosiest nooks and se- 
cretest corners, — now snug up against a big 
beam and now close beneath the eaves, under 
the thatch of a bundle of rye or cuddled in a 
fragrant cellar-hole of their own digging in the 
hay, — where they go every day to deposit the 
summer hopes of the yard, and afterward sit 
solitary and musing, waiting for the grass to 
sprout and the welcome peep of the new brood 
to make itself heard. It is " fun " to stumble 
upon these nests, for the whole household es-- 



84 HOMESPUN. 

teems them such prizes. A cap-full of freshly 
laid eggs, fetched into the kitchen without no- 
tice, creates a very general family joy. I do 
not believe the adventurer in El Dorado, who 
has fallen on a placer or struck suddenly 
upon a vein, feels a thrill of delight one whit 
more intense than the boy who, in the de- 
serted old barn in the spring, comes upon the 
unexpected treasure of a nest-full of hens' eggs. 
Since Columbus broke Ms Qg^^ in the shrewd 
and simple spirit of " Poor Richard," to dis- 
cover and to find has been the delight of child 
and man, and probably will be to the end of 
human history. Discovery, in truth, is both 
the hint and pith of all development. 

In these same dear old barns, too, the chil- 
dren are licensed to suspend swings, where the 
dreamy Saturday afternoons slip by almost 
unrecorded, but remain green memories ever 
after. What a multitudinous patter of little 
feet upon the oaken floor! What a riotous 
chorus of voices throughout the rambling old 
realm! What a musical tide of discordant 
noises, flowing out through the open doors 
over the yard! Now the prince of the ring 
sails up to the big beam, just touching it with 
the tips of his toes ; and now he is tossed back 
to the very chinks that let in light so dimly 



BARN LIFE. 85 

tinder the eaves, or sweeps ever so airily across 
the uppermost scaffold, on this side, — and 
hangs, for a second or two, suspended over the 
yawning bay, on that. It is delightful, and in- 
describable ; even the long sweep of the swing 
on the big elm near the house has no peculiar 
experience like this of the swing in the barn. 

Spring starts new life in the barn and its 
precincts, just as in all other places. A very 
few days, steeped in the flood of its warming 
suns, are sufficient to empty all the stalls and 
send forth their occupants into the yards and 
the nigh pastures. The oxen alone come home 
at noon to bait, and timorous young calves lie 
with feet tucked under them in the deep pens, 
waiting for the coming of sundown and their 
milky mothers. Blue-frocked butchers may be 
seen scouring around the premises then, pick- 
ing up what the winter may have added or left 
over. An old turkey slys in, with a winking 
eye and an open ear, to peck at stray seeds 
and keep the run of the capacious establish- 
ment ; mayhap, considering if a snug home- 
nest somewhere hereabout may not, after all, 
be better than to take the chances of weather 
and foxes under the birches on the edge of the 
woodland. 

In the yellow autumnal days, however, the 



86 HOMESPUN 

barn is in its real glory ; for then it is full to 
bursting, and the farmer's hopes are at last gar- 
nered in. With hay packed and piled every- 
where, crammed and crowded, overloading and 
overrunning, — with oats all threshed and win- 
nowed, and poured into the bins and barrels, 
— with shocks of corn stacked away in all the 
corners and jogs and angles, encroaching on 
the floor, and allowing only narrow passages 
through to the cattle-stalls, — there broods 
within the barn a sentiment of snugness and 
warmth, to which few other sentiments are 
precisely comparable. 

By scaling the hay-mow, in the middle of 
one of these same golden days, the sun falling* 
through the open gable window across the 
hay, I have many a time lain and heard mice 
creeping about in their fragrant mines below, 
and childishly fancied them renewing former 
acquaintance in a spirit of frolicsome congrat- 
ulation; as who should say — " Is not all this 
fixed up for us alone?" Or, again, I have 
caught the smothered voices of insects, exiles 
from foreign fields, that cling to the hay-stalks 
as the last hope of lengthening their little life 
of summer. They utter cries burdened with 
an indescribable melancholy, echoing in the 
heart unspoken presages of decay and death. 



BARN LIFE. 87 

The various tribes are fairly represented here, 
— the same that colonized, in summer's green- 
ness, on the hill-side slopes, and skimmed the 
thickly-standing spires of herd's-grass and fox- 
tail, in the meadow. To lie thus on the sweet 
hay in autumn, and listen to these sounds in 
the spirit of interpretation, is to live over again, 
for only a sunny strip of days, the summer ex- 
periences in the meadow and beneath the trees 
that dot the green slopes of the upland. It is 
but the delicious summer lessons conned once 
more in the lap of autumn, with all the sounds 
and scents of summer to impress them on the 
sensitive memory. 

When the great doors are shut, at evening, 
and the lantern hangs from the beam overhead, 
and a happy group of men and boys sit and 
husk the yellow corn about the middle of the 
floor, and the round moon hangs luminous in 
the autumn sky, — the chickens all snug on 
their roosts in the apple-trees, and the turkeys 
poised for the night on heights even above 
them, — no Arab tent or gypsy encampment 
ever offered more striking points of real pictur- 
esqueness ; the added charm of the corn-husk- 
ing scene comes from its domestic associations, 
which the other pictures lack. The old farm- 
ers stint themselves to so many ears, of an 



88 HOMESPUN. 

evening; and they will relate their exploits 
years afterward, when the topic conmes up for 
friendly brag and comparison. The young 
people, in particular, set great store by these 
times ; for there are slyer chances for a kiss, up 
here in the half-shadows, than were ever to be 
found at all the bees and quiltings ; and " gra- 
cious knows " how many tender passages have 
shaped and fixed whole human lives after- 
ward ! 

The thumping flails, through these sunny 
and contemplative days, answer one another 
from farm to farm across the valleys, beating 
tattoo for the welcome harvest-time. 'They 
sound dull or ringing, on the hills and in the 
valleys, as the wind breezes from or toward 
you. Like the loud tickings of the tall clock 
in the house, they notch off the bushels of 
glossy grain that are to be slipped into the 
granary. 

And when Winter has set in with serious 
intent, one can enjoy hours in the barn even 
then, adding insensibly to the stores of his 
contemplation. It is pleasant to see the cat- 
tle feeding in their stalls, after being all well 
housed and bedded for the night. They hardly 
look at you now, their moist muzzles so masked 
with wisps of sw^eet fodder ; but their thick 
necks, — 



BARN LIFE. 89 

" whose throats have hanging at tnem 

Wallets of flesh," — 

their branching horns, their broad shoulders 
and brawny backs attract you, in spite of your^ 
self; and you stay only to grow glad, as a child 
would, in thinking of their winter comforts and 
plenty, after a season of such pleasant summer 
days off in the turfy pastures. 

As I have already observed, the Barn seems 
to be the farmer's Study, where he thinks his 
thoughts, gathers together his hints, and learns 
practically all his lessons; and I have under- 
taken to illustrate a part of this fancy with 
some simple verses, that may be none the better 
or worse for that singular quality : — 

UP IN THE BARN. 

Old Farmer Joe steps through the doors, 

As wide to him as gates of Thebes ; 
And, thoughtful, walks about the floors 
Whereon are piled his winter stores, 
And counts the profits of his glebes. 

Ten tons of timothy up there, 

And four of clover in the bay; 
Red-top that cut — well, middlirC fair, 
And bins of roots, oblong and square, 
To help eke out the crop of hay. 



90 HOMESPUN. 

A dozen head of cattle stand 

Reflective in the leaf-strewn yard ; 

And stalks are stacked on every hand, 

The latest offering of the land 

To labor long maintained and hard. 

Cart-loads of pumpkins yonder lie — 
The horse is feeding in his stall — 
The oats are bundled scaflbld high, 
And peas and beans are heaped hard by, 
As if it were some festival. 

At length old Farmer Joe sits down, — 

A patch across each of his knees ; 
He crowds his hat back on his crown, 
Then clasps his hands, — so hard and brown, 
And, like a farmer, takes his ease. 

" How fast the years do go ! " says he ; 

"It seems, in fact, but yesterday. 
That in this very barn we three — 
David, Ezekiel, and me, — 

Pitched in the summer loads of hay ! 

" David, — he sails his clippers now ; 

And 'Zekiel died in Mexico ; — 
Some one must stay and ride to plow, 
Get up the horse, and milk a cow, — 

And who, of course, but little Joe ? 



BARN LIFE. 91 

"I might have been — I can't tell what! — 
Who knows about it till he tries? — 

I might have settled in some spot 

Where money is more easy got; 
Perhaps beneath Pacific skies. 

" I might have preached, like Parson Duer ; 

Or got a livin' at the law ; 
I might have gone to Congress, sure; 
I might have kept a Water Cure ; 

I might have gone and been — oh, pshaw! 

" For better far it is as 't is ; 

What fortune waits him, no man knows ; 
What he has got, that, sure, is his ; 
It makes no odds if stocks have viz, 

Or politicians come to blows I 

" Content is rich, and somethin' more — 
I think I 've heerd somebody says ; 

If 't ever rains, it 's apt to pour ; 

And I am rich, on this barn floor, 
When all is mine that I can raise ! 

" I Ve plowed and mowed this dear old farm 

Till not a rod but what I know ; 
I Ve kept the Old Folks snug and warm, 
And lived without a twinge of harjn, — 

I don't care how the storm might blow. 



9SS HOMESPUN. 

" And on this same old farm I '11 stay, 
And raise my cattle and my corn ; 

Here shall these hairs turn wholly gray ; 

These feet shall never learn to stray ; — 
But / will die where I was horn ! " 

And Farmer Joe pulled down his hat, 
And stood up on his feet once more ; 

He would not argue, after that. 

But, like a born aristocrat. 

Kept on his walk about the floor. 




A MOBNINa AT THE BBOOK, 

HOW much comes of association ; and that 
is the delicious fruit of observation, of 
temperament, and of time. A brook is, of 
itself, an idle little thing ; yet it possesses very- 
varied combinations of power, after it has once 
found its way through a susceptible heart. A 
tree stands out statuesquely in the landscape, 
— simply a tree, with head, stem, leaves, and 
branches. But we fall into a pleasant habit 
of sitting in its shadow, and of silently telling 
over the stories of our sorrows and joys, of 
our desires and disappointments to the green 
thatch it builds above our heads, — and from 
that day this tree becomes a friend, a confix 
dant, and, in truth, a part of our very selves. 

Out of the twelve months of the year, 

June and October are our especial favorites. 
Perhaps October is fuller of what are really 
deep delights, the atmosphere then having an 
infusion — as the skyey cope has a coloring, -— 
of that genuinely spiritual quality which rains 



94 HOMESPUN. 

down for the soul the true manna of nourish- 
ment. The sights and sounds of delicious 
June are possibly more sensuous than those 
of dreamy October ; the earth, the sky, waters, 
birds, trees, buds, — all are expressive of the 
emphasis of promise ; and that presents its 
appeal to the heart through the senses, making 
it leap up at last, in its very overplus of joy. 
But Nature is especially given to contrasts ; 
thus she produces her finest effects. June 
being so wholly distinct from October, its very 
name reading like a poem in the calendar, it 
might be expected that the experiences it 
brings freshly every year might be distinct 
also. 

June is the eastern, as October is the west- 
ern gate of the Year. She trips in across a 
carpet of brightest verdure, the posts and pil- 
lars and arch at the entrance clustered with 
vines and burdened with roses. She goes out 
in majestic pomp and state, canopied with skies 
that reflect dazzling hues, the cool green trans- 
muted now to scarlet and purple, orange and 
gold. Yet, June does but throw October into 
brighter and more beautiful relief. Each makes 
a fine foil for the other. And, for ourselves, 
having so long been in the habit of coupling 
these heavenly months, it never falls to our 



A MORNING AT THE BROOK. 95 

fortune to enjoy the one without thinking of 
the other also. In our heart, they were always 
twinned. Their names alone are like boxes 
that are compacted with the fragrance of pecu- 
liar delights. It is needless for us moderns to 
hope to surpass the underrated ancients in the 
bestowal of nomenclatures that are indeed po- 
etic. 



A June morning was newly born to us 



not many months ago, of which we feel very 
certain that we had dreams beforehand, for 
many a year. It is true, we had drunk the 
breath of many a June morning in its beauty, 
but of none before like this. It was ours, the 
moment it dawned, and as such it was in- 
stinctively laid hold of. So, indeed, do all 
things in nature belong to us, if we could but 
trace the divine right of possession and use. 

We awoke with the low trill of the earliest 
bird — the song of a tawny-breasted robin, 
whose little heart was swelling with love for 
its household treasures in a tree hard by. With 
that first gush of song our soul came to life 
again. While the morning's gray still envel- 
oped everything out of doors, and the rustic 
household continued its sleep of an innocent 
care, we made haste to put on our daily attire, 



96 HOMESPUN, 

and crept silently down the stairs and through 
the passages. Hastily disposing of a cold bite, 
and swallowing a draught of sweet " night's 
milk " with the cream clotting the surface, we 
pocketed the well-scoured angle-dogs, shoul- 
dered our birch fishing-rod, and sallied forth for 
a little thread of a brook whose every way- 
ward twist and turn had long been perfectly 
familiar. 

It cost a tramp of a mile or more. The 
dust in the country road lay a little matted 
under the dews, while, as we trudged on, we 
caught the ever w^elcome sound of cattle low- 
ing in the pastures, on this side and the other, 
impatient for the return of companions that 
were yarded the night before. There was not 
the lightest breath of a breeze astir. Now and 
then, an early bird flitted across from one road- 
side covert to another, offering us the wel- 
come of a true fellowship with a quick chirp 
and the flirt of a brown wing. The dappled 
east was rapidly becoming glorified with the 
colors that were beginning to pile themselves 
in such splendid disarray. As we pushed on 
up the road, more solitary in thought than if 
the hour were that of midnight, it very forcibly 
occurred to us how much they were the losers 
who never left their beds out of the accus- 



A MORNING AT THE BROOK. 97 

tomed hours. Here was a little fresh morning 
jaunt, now, worth a good many times the 
trouble it cost, for it took us almost insensibly 
into the realm of new experiences. 

We scaled some mossy bars, ranged off 
down a slope among a few stunted apple-trees, 
and, to be brief, were not long in reaching the 
brookside. Close by was a strip of woods ; 
into which we plunged for a few minutes only, 
that no possible impression of the morning 
might be lost upon us. In that cool twilight 
which seemed braided by bough and leaf, the 
bird family were just getting up and coming 
down from their airy chambers. They called 
gayly one to another from out the windows of 
their different apartments, as if asking of the 
new morning that re-created the world for 
them ; and their piping voices echoed through 
every sylvan arch and along every leafy corri- 
dor. The green and velvety mosses under 
foot were scarcely damp, and the short grasses 
hardly held a pearl on the points of all their 
blades, such complete protection the dense 
umbrage offered against the night dews. 

In the heart of the morning silence — which 

is an awakening rather than a dreaming 

silence — we were startled by the noise of 

young cattle roving through the wood, break- 
7 



98 HOMESPUN. 

ing down the tender undergrowth of shrub 
and brush, and half-boldly, half-timidly advanc- 
ing within eye-shot of so unfamiliar an intruder. 
Their wild eyes, answering to the Honaeric 
epithet, were as full of lustre as the beads of 
dew that Night had scattered over the grass of 
the meadow. 

Emerging from this verdurous temple, and 
leaving the happy birds behind us, we crept 
stealthily down to the edge of the wimpling 
stream, and made the first cast of the morn- 
ing. The brook, where we stood, was scarcely 
bigger than our body, — which we cannot in 
conscience assert has not waxed somewhat 
since that day ; and the shy little Naiad 
seemed trying to hide itself among the sedges 
and under the long, rushy grasses. We stood 
knee-deep now in the wet and matted jungle 
o*f the morning, while all around us, in among 
the slender stems of the grass, insects without 
name or number were just starting up to en- 
joy the gay sport of their span-long summer 
existence. And while in this half-surprised 
posture, up came the flaming sun over the 
eastern hills, and began pouring its golden 
glory like a flood into the sparkling basin of 
the meadow. 

As we tramped along, making a fresh cast 



A MORNING AT THE BROOK 99 

of the line with every few steps, and leaving 
but a single trail in the heavy grass behind us, 
each advance revealed to the delighted eye 
newer and expanded charms. Now the spirit 
took in the meaning of the freshness and 
sweet fragrance of Morning. Snatches from 
the rural poets came singing their way into 
our heart, like golden-zoned bees driving 
homeward with their freights of honey. Over 
night, the busy spiders, with the instinct of 
Penelope, had spun slenderest ropes of very 
gossamer, and swung them across from one 
grass-spire to another, each rope, like a sus- 
pension bridge, heavy with its string of pearly 
dews, which the fancy delighted to believe 
early passengers. 

We frightened a callow bird out of his hid- 
ing-place among the tussocks, where he was 
squatted with upturned bill, waiting in dumb 
patience for the coming of his provident 
mother. A lithe and string-like black snake 
uncoiled himself from the fork of an alder- 
bush, and slid down with a slump, that is in 
our ears now, into the water. The homely 
chewink advertised us of her brisk where- 
abouts, by her musical monotone in the neigh- 
boring thicket of birches. A gay little yellow- 
poll played an eager air on his bagpipe, as if 



100 HOMESPUN. 

he would frankly ask us how we liked that^ so 
bright and early in the morning. The poly- 
glottal bobolink careered in a sort of drunken 
delight across the level stretch of meadow, and 
alighted on a frail rush stem at last, to swing 
out the rest of the little joy he had not strength 
to sing. 

By and by, the voices of boys could be 
heard over on the opposite hill-sides, screaming 
their shrill " Go-long ! " to cows that were too 
slow for their temper. Next, the hissing sound 
of scythes, grinding for the morning's work 
down in the mowing. Then a cart, rattling 
with a great noise over a stony length of the 
road. And now, cattle lowing to one another 
from all the hill-sides, — and young calves 
bleating, — and the whole day fairly awake 
with its sounds of life and activity. Still, 
along down through the meadow we pursued 
our devious way, casting and recasting our 
line in the water, twisting our path just as the 
little brook twisted its own course, — errant 
and tortuous, — that kept whispering and smil- 
ing, prattling and laughing to us, till we ached 
to know of what pleasant secret the sprite 
would wish to unburden itself to our ears. 

How many speckled beauties were 

ours, as a tribute from the little brook that 



A MORNING AT THE BROOK. 101 

morning, a peep into our creel would have 
readily disclosed ; but we found finer things 
to feed on than trouts in that charmed spot, 
greatly as we admire and love even them. 

Such a morning, three good hours long as 
we made it, lies in my memory now like the 
fresh picture of a world of which we feel that, 
in some previous existence, perhaps, we may 
once have dreamed. It was every whit itself. 
Nothing else could be like it. It would be 
styled a very cheap pleasure by many, because 
there was no carriage hire needed to reach it ; 
but such are the only pleasures, let us remem- 
ber, that are afterwards called up as the green 
spots of the lifetime. Nothing of this sort can 
be found up for sale. Money bears no relation 
to it. High health, deep lungs, an open eye, 
ready perceptions, and a fresh and innocent 
heart, — these are all the few and simple con- 
ditions. 

And yet the world hurries to Newport and 
the Springs foi pleasure, and is bored to death 
with the delights it enjoys in such surfeit ! A 
little idle brook, romping out of the alder thick- 
ets and stealing down through the open mead- 
ows, shall, for true tranquility and genuine 
satisfaction, put all their artifices to shame. 
We never turn away our face from the brook- 



102 HOMESPUN. 

side and start homewards, without repeating 
the exquisite lines quoted by gentle Izaak Wal- 
ton and credited by the Father of Angling to 
Sir Henry Wotton : — 

'' May pure contents 
Forever pitch their tents 

Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains; 

And peace still slumber by these purling fountains, 
"Which we may every year 
Meet when we come a-fishing here." 




OVB AUNT. 

SHE was just seventy when she died ; but 
we never seemed to think, till then, of 
her being any older than on the day she was 
forty. She inherited youth to a most generous 
degree : — the new morning was not more fresh 
than the flow of her spirits. 

Most people associate Aunts with sharp- 
edged words, and phrases that might have been 
run in an iron mould ; with suspicious super- 
vision, two wrinkles between the eyes, and a 
voice from which drop the distillations of any- 
thing but honey. Addison describes them, in 
one of the numbers of the " Spectator," as 
" antiquated Sybils, that forebode and pro- 
phesy irom one end of the year to the other ; " 
and in too many cases they are quite content 
to answer to the description. It would out- 
rage my feelings beyond account, however, to 
compiare our Aunt with the common run of 
Aunts who may be catalogued under one or 
the other of the foregoing descriptions. 



104 HOMESPUN. 

She was a great lover of Nature's own things. 
The stay-behind robins knew at whose door 
they could get free board — with lodgings 
about the barn and sheds — through the weary, 
dreary winter ; and the woodpeckers and snow- 
birds understood, with no further telling, that 
the meaty bones, hung at the back of the 
house, were exclusively for their picking. Chil- 
dren were not more alive, in the dawn of the 
June mornings, to catch the earliest note of the 
three o'clock robin, or to find their round nests- 
full of eggs snugged away under the leaves. 
So fresh a heart is childhood's own ; but she 
had it, and she kept it, too, up to the day she 
became three-score and ten. For even while 
she lay, one April afternoon, on the bed on 
which she shortly after died, she lifted her head 
to greet, as she would a personal friend, the 
pretty blue jay that flew to the low roof close 
by and tried to look in at her window. — It was 
a touch of nature that started tears in the eyes 
that witnessed such simplicity of affection. 

Among the children, while they were coming 
on and coming up, she was esteemed almost 
like an own mother. They never felt a twinge 
of fear in her presence, but rather sought the 
magnetism of her smiles and the glad conta- 
gion of her humor. She was young once more 



OUR AUNT. 105 

with them ; and as they grew in years and in 
wisdom, she managed, with the help of her 
warm and ready sympathies, to keep pace with 
them, too. It was all very beautiful ; I take it 
upon me to say that no other family group 
ever fm-nished an Aunt in this respect the par- 
allel of ours. 

An Aunt is too apt to be a sort of nightmare 
in a house ; children conceal everything they 
can from her : — but our Aunt was made a 
repository of all the precious secrets there were 
on foot. She gave us counsel and made us 
fun. Her dignity was imbedded in her char- 
acter, not pinned on to the surface of her gown, 
or starched into the high crown of her cap. 
For childish low spirits or moodiness she was 
an all-cure. She never shed tears, and would 
not revive sorrows. Her whole life was in liv- 
ing', not in a vague hope that she would do so 
after present troubles were past. Every anec- 
dote that had currency in her own youth she 
gayly reproduced for the illustration of ours ; 
every odd phrase she could call up from the 
recollections of a generation that went before 
ours, she passed around in our little circle like 
good coin that had been clipped. Her own 
school-days were somehow made to fit into our 
school-days ; the beaux of her time found their 



106 HOMESPUN. 

reproduction in the gallants of ours ; she never 
tired of repeating the unique sayings of her 
earlier days, nor did we of listening to her. 
She turned every accident humorously, and so 
taught us by example how to defy disappoint- 
ment. If things had gone wrong heretofore, 
they were sure to come right by and by. 
Hopefulness was as generously hers as mirth ; 
and both combined to form a third quality of 
cheerfulness that made sunshine around her in 
the cloudiest day. 

And maiden aunt though she was, no one 
ever felt her to be one of those " proper " bodies 
whose presence seems to make the atmosphere 
thick and heavy. There was no taint of judi- 
cial severity about her; she enjoyed far too 
much to let it effervesce or waste in criticism. 
She had been gifted with such generous store 
of genuine sentiment or sympathy, it was no 
office of hers to be following up others with the 
everlasting line and plummet. Those who have 
been, wont to run from maiden aunts would 
assuredly have run toward her. Cheerfulness 
in persons of ripened years is always attractive 
and charming ; but in her, even mirth was pe- 
culiarly becoming. None had a heartier relish 
of innocent laughter than she ; and she was a 
practised hand in the art of provoking it be- 



OUR AUNT. 107 

sides. Saintly and affectionate as she was at 
heart, and simple and sweet as her nature was 
all the way through, there was no lack, either, 
of the fine clay of earthliness which makes of 
our ideal delights a present reality. If she 
knew what affection was worth, and how to 
bestow it, too, she likewise understood what 
a genial stimulant it always found in a bright 
fire, a warm room, and an attractively spread 
table. She believed in the substantial, while 
her heart was none the less open to the waver- 
ing, floating dreams of the invisible. 

I realize now what a comfort it used to 
be to her, — and what a blessed memory it 
will always remain to me, — for me to sit with 
her in her chamber, of quiet Sunday afternoons, 
and read aloud her favorite chapters and pas- 
sages in the old Bible that always lay on the 
little stand in the corner^ The sublime sim- 
plicity of Job affected her ; I knew that she 
was conscious of the temporary rapture of feel- 
ing, equally with him who sat and read on. 
Her charity and long-suffering were truly be- 
yond description's reach ; she was patient and 
forgiving when many of us would indeed lose 
our own patience for her. We never heard 
murmurs from her lips ; she of course had dis- 
appointments, like the rest of us, but she had 



108 HOMESPUN. 

no complaint to make of them ; neither, on the 
other hand, was she entirely indifferent to the 
turns and changes of fortune ; — but a spirit of 
repining never could find a place to build its 
nest in that happy heart. Whoever sorrowed 
and lamented in her presence, found but poor 
companionship. 

How shall I write of her spinning- 
wheel — an heir-loom in the family — which 
she kept buzzing every winter until the last one 
of her life, though the days of hand-spinning 
were long ago over? She averred that she 
spun merely to perpetuate the good old cus- 
tom. The old wheel stood in the attic, and 
there, weather permitting, she went off alone 
with her rolls of white wool, and presently 
made the rafters vibrate with its droning 
music. We used to go softly to the stairs, and 
listen to her as she kept up singing and spin- 
ning together ; — nobody would have said that 
house lacked for a light heart then. — The 
Past must have vividly reproduced itself in this 
chosen solitariness of hers, and father, mother, 
and grandparents must have seemed to make 
their appearance almost with the starting of 
the wheel. 

I never came home from a tramp along the 
brookside for trout, but she displayed all the 



OUR AUNT. 109 

eagerness of a child to know my luck ; and 
she would stand and contemplate the spotted 
beauties as I drew them forth from my basket, 
with a satisfaction almost the parallel of my 
own. And whatever trophies I brought to the 
house from the swamps or hill-sides, or from 
the berry pastures — whether wild flowers, or 
pretty birds'-nests which I had found deserted, 
or baskets of glossy berries — got as earnest a 
welcome at her hands as if she were young 
along with me, and only regretted that she, too, 
could not be out of doors through all the pleas- 
ant weather. My own field stories she matched 
with hers ; and she betrayed as close and pa- 
tient observation of life in the meadows and 
along the edge of the hill-sides as if she were a 
born naturalist. 

Whenever she went idly scouting across the 
soft turf of the orchard, or the mowing, or the 
pasture, she invariably carried in her hand a 
long stick, partly for support, but chiefly to 
poke about and hunt up with ; that stick was 
thrust into every hiding-place where it was 
thought a guinea's nest might be laid away ; 
kindly helped her across the moist places and 
glistening little runnels ; raked away the leaves 
from the brown chestnuts that were rained 
down in autumn ; and was at last laid on the 



110 HOMESPUN. 

wall, or stood against the back shed, when she 
reached the door of Home again. 

It was a passion with her to raise turkeys ; 
and inasmuch as the sly old jades loved to roam 
off into the edge of the woods back of the house, 
I am grateful for being permitted to remember 
the times I have beaten up those woods for 
her, beginning pretty early in March, to solve 
the problem of her turkeys' prolonged absence. 
She had as anxious and tender a care for the 
young poults, after they broke the shell, as if they 
had been her very children ; fetching them into 
the house over night — the weaklings among 
them — and nursing and coddling them up 
with such various preparations as the lives of 
so many generations of turkeys have depended 
upon. Just before bedtime, it was slightly 
amusing to go out into the kitchen and " stir 
up " her feathered hospital near the stove, or 
on the warmed hearth. In her thoughts, the 
spring was associated with the coming off of 
hens with their downy broods, just as much as 
with the sprouting of cowslips and dandelions. 
No poet ever wove tenderer sentiments. on that 
joyful season into the staple of his verse. 

Few came to the house to stay, who had not 
thought beforehand as much of enjoying the 
company of our Aunt as of the best of us. 



OUR AUNT. Ill 

And in calling up pleasant reminiscences of 
their visits, long afterward, her name rose al- 
most the first of all on their lips. The house 
was much the sunnier because of her presence. 
She could not bear trouble, but preferred to 
drive it off with laughter and light-hearted ness. 
I did not touch the depth of her philosophy- 
then ; but I see now how much she gained, 
and everybody else can gain, by refusing hos- 
pitality to thoughts of trouble and bolting the 
door of the heart against the messengers of 
low spirits. She wasted no part of her life in 
standing and parleying with these dismal shad- 
ows. Where she was, we were sure to find 
bright skies. The influence of such a person 
over a family of children, when exerted day by 
day for a regular course of years, while the 
plastic nature is receiving the most delicate im- 
pressions, can hardly be put into expression, 
for it can be estimated only through the term 
of a whole life. 

We stood about her open grave on a 

soft day in April, which seemed, with two or 
three kindred days, to have been slipped into 
the calendar of our uncertain springs, as Na- 
ture's own gentle tribute to her memory. Not 
all the praises of the world, had they been re- 
cited for her sainted name then, could have 



112 HOMESPUN. 

been so welcome and so precious to us as 
this bright and open favor which was silently 
dropped out of the blue skies. The grass was 
starting along the country roadsides, and its 
shades of green showed daintily up the slopes. 
The meadows just over the stone walls were 
moist with the spring rains, and the rivulets 
glistened in the distance with laughing glad- 
ness at their release. The beautiful day was 
so like her own spirit ; sunny, cheerful, and 
calm. Our sadness received a sharper edge for 
so obvious an association. 

I shall never pluck the wild flowers of 

spring by the woodside again, but my thoughts 
will go straight to her. I shall not wander in 
the huckleberry pastures and gather handfuls 
of the glossy fruit she loved herself to pick, 
without feeling her very presence. Up in the 
attic, I shall always seem to hear her voice. 
When we all assemble again in the old rooms 
of Home, it will not be as it used to be, with- 
out her. It is the blessing of a life to have 
had such a good soul to love. Childhood is 
so much the richer for it, and the after years 
are penetrated with the influence to their end. 



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AUTUMN BAYS, 

ON him who goes forth into the woods and 
fields during these ripe autumnal days, in 
a spirit suffused with gentleness, and peace, 
and all the harmonies of the time, there de- 
scends an influence that makes the face of 
Nature into a new picture, and draws from it 
an expression which the heart loves to brood 
upon in the sweet silence of contemplation. 

The spell is a strange one that works with 
such potency through the placid passage of 
these golden days, eluding analysis or explana- 
tion. So gauzy is the airiness with which the 
halo veils woods and waters, meadow and hill- 
side, that it at length comes to envelop the 
Sympathetic spirit's self in its welcome folds, 
and discovers to the penetrating vision dreams 
which are of rest, and bliss, and heaven. 

How many are the enticements which pre- 
sent themselves out-doors, at this time ! There 
is too much heat, and a feeling of lassitude, in 
the daily development of Spring ; but noWi all 



114 HOMESPUN. 

is so cool and tranquil, — the pastures lie so 
still in the lap of the haze, — the sun's heat is 
so gentle and genial, — the atmosphere bathes 
the spirit in so deliciously indolent a current, — 
that it is a delight just to be out doing little 
but breathing, letting the eyes wander idly this 
way and that, and silently answering with the 
spirit to the calls that may be heard by the sen- 
sitive ear all over God's perfect creation. 

An Autumn Day has neither heat nor 

haste in it. It is a perfect thing. Like the 
Ethiop's pearl, it seems to lie dissolving its 
little riches in the vast beaker whose rim is the 
horizon. Placidity utters itself through all its 
quiet expression. Contemplation — that slow 
and sure ripening process of the human soul 
— steeps itself in its delicious atmosphere. 
We instinctively suffer our feet to lead us off 
among the trees, and develop a new love for 
being alone. Solitudes are delightful now, be- 
cause they supply their own companionship. 
Nature's self is enough, and more than enough.* 
We would ask for nothing, for life now is deep 
and full. 

Instead of the ruddy apple-blossoms of ?»Iay 
down in the orchard, we have the trees heavy 
with the thick globes of polished fruit. All 
the bars between the pastures are down, and 



AUTtTMN DAYS, 115 

the cattle may stray where they will. The 
brown stubble harbors armies of sable crickets, 
that skip away in rows before approaching 
feet. The hill-sides begin to look faded and a 
little sere, the w^ild-grape vines on the ledges 
turning brown and yellow, and the brakes part- 
ing with their juicy greenness. That beautiful 
American heath plant — the whortleberry bush 
— now shows ruddy, or russet red ; and the 
sunshine nestles in its masses with a look of 
melancholy that is like a speechless lamenta- 
tion for the lost delights of the summer. The 
choke-berries, in their long and clustering spikes, 
display red, or black, as they bend down their 
supporting stems ; and flocks of tawny-breast- 
ed robins gather everywhere about the sunny 
ledges where they grow, discussing their jour- 
ney southward into genial winter quarters. 

YoTi will see, on nearing the skirts of the 
woodland, busy squirrels racing in and out on 
the riders of the rail fences, their cheeks stuffed 
out with stolen corn. A clumsy woodchuck, 
fat from his autumnal foraging on the farmers' 
pumpkins, trundles off across the patch of 
ploughed land over the wall, afraid lest the 
dogs have spied and will bring him to stern 
account before he can quite whisk his gray tail 
into his domicil. Who would seriouslv care 



116 HOMESPUN. 

to revel in the sweet abundance with which he 
gorges himself, if every sound is charged with 
fear, and his heart beats with sudden sugges- 
tions of apoplexy ? 

At home, in and around the house, these 
days are like no other. All about the yard and 
garden, it is almost religiously still. A voice 
makes a circle in the air, like a stone dropped 
in a lake. The overgrown chickens wallow, in 
lazy luxury, under the currant-bushes, having 
discarded scratching altogether. The wasps 
swarm around the chamber and attic windows, 
stealing in with every chance, and colonizing 
in such warm and secret nooks as handily offer 
themselves. The garden vegetables, if not got 
in, are ripe to their utmost fulness ; and the 
wilted vines and haulms lie decaying over the 
spots where but yesterday they erected col- 
umns and spires of freshest verdure. It is a 
more than half sad feeling that rises in the heart 
now, as one opens the little garden-gate and 
strolls down the central walk to the summer- 
house ; not quite of sorrow, nor of regret that 
all the green pomp of summer is gone ; but a 
tender and delicious grief, such as one would 
not avoid, that seems to flow out of the very 
sun and air into the receptive soul. And that 
is just the secret; we are in closer harmony 



A UTUMN DA YS. 117 

with earth and its mysterious influences, at 
this season, and disposed, like little children, to 
throw ourselves upon her charitable love and 
into her open arms. This autumnal magnet- 
ism works purgatively on the whole year's spir- 
itual humors, expelling what is incapable of 
assimilation with our natures, and, by holding 
us half asleep and dreamy in the adyta of 
earth's quietude, bringing us into more inti- 
mate and holy relations with ourselves than 
we were conscious of before. In this regard, 
the Autumn days are indescribably peculiar; 
the soul run^ over with happiness, and we 
know it for a truer and purer happiness because 
it has no impetuosity, no superficial heat or 
hurry, but rather an undertone of sadness that 
cannot be forced 1:0 the surface in language. 

If I were compelled to give up all but one 
particular portion of the year, this should be 
the one I would cling to longest. Because 
these are, of all the others, the most truly di- 
vine days in the calendar ; fuller of spiritual 
meaning and spiritual delight. These invite 
contemplation more than the others ; fill all 
the respiratory organs of the soul with the oxy- 
gen of their calm purity; are peopled with 
more visions of genuine imaginative beauty ; 
and are more clear of those films and cloudy 



118 HOMESPUN. 

screens that at other times overcast the spirit's 
canopy. They take us to heights in the land- 
scape of life where we get larger views than 
before. They sober our impulses, calm our 
restlessness, hold us with a gentle firmness to 
our own proper plane, establish the centripetal 
force within us, and develop a personal insight 
that stands forth first in the order of the soul's 
faculties. If they have not a brook-like tor- 
rent of joy dashing and foaming through them, 
like some few other days of the year, they are, 
nevertheless, seamed and grooved deeply with 
those streams that run by silently, and with 
accumulated power. 

Nature calls to us, every one, — " Come 
out ! come out ! and let us know one another 
better ! " One feels the expression and the 
emphasis of the call, when one goes thought- 
fully skirting the rusthng cornfields, thick with 
the yellow ears, or passes devoutly within the 
illuminated temple of the woods, glorified 
with the combined colors of the year. Even 
the semicircular army of turkeys, ranging the 
pastures for the skipping fatlings of the grass, 
seem as much a part of the scene, and their 
low, melancholy cry is as much a real voice 
of the time, as the skies and the woods and 
the hazy smoke themselves. The cows that 



AUTUMN DAYS. 119 

graze along the hill-sides are of contemplative 
mien, and look mildly up at you, thus disturb- 
ing their solitudes, as if they would fain in- 
quire whether you be of their way or no. 
And all among the shy little coverts, where 
was the dark secrecy of green leaves through 
early summer, is now reflected the bright light 
of hanging cloths of russet and crimson and 
gold. The wild creeper on the stone wall has 
been dipped in the dyes of the transmuting at- 
mosphere, and come out a frill of brilliancy that 
makes the old wall regal in the memory after- 
ward. 

How gayly chatters that rascally red squirrel 
overhead, about affairs at home, including his 
prospects for the winter ! As who should say 
to the crafty woodsman, skulking with gun and 
dog to surprise him, — " Sir, be content, if you 
please, to live and let live ! You would be in 
better business if you would go in quest of 
bigger game ! " The pond is mottled with the 
painted autumn leaves, which it slowly drags 
down, at last, to " muddy death," paving its 
broad floor with the same gay mosaic it has so 
recently reflected in its surface. A covey of 
plump quails start up from under the rail 
fence, making a whistling thunder with their 
wings that almost stops the beating of your 



120 HOMESPUN. 

heart. No song-birds are caroling their hymns 
now, but even they appear to have drawn into 
their little breasts the peculiar thoughtfulness 
of the air. They flit by, from spot to spot ; 
but it is in silence, for they are packing up for 
lower latitudes. 

All sounds and voices now are freighted 
with another meaning. The cawing of sable 
flocks of crows in the woods, — the bleat of 
sheep in the far pastures, — the shout of boys 
to the toiling oxen in the cornfield, — the 
lowing of cattle across the distant hills, — the 
sharp, quick bark of the watch-dog, or the 
eager hunter, in the wood patch, — the noisy 
cackling of hens about the barn, — reach the 
ear on so subdued and sweet a ^ey, that one 
cannot but wish he might feel the waves of so 
soft a medium beating about him through all 
the year, preserving the poetic qualities of 
sound as perfectly as flies are preserved in am- 
ber. The laughter of the children, nutting in 
the grove of hickories and chestnuts, is like no 
other laughter heard ; no atmosphere but this 
could so fix its delicious qualities in the ear 
and heart. 

And when the sunset hour approaches, and 
the great god of light prepares to gather about 
him the yellow folds of haze and mist, and the 



AUTUMN DAYS. 121 

whole air holds such a " solemn stillness " that 
one can almost talk with his thoughts aloud, 
the lonely katydid shrilling her hoarse cry up 
in the chambers of the elms and sycamores, 
and the crickets chiming in with their melan- 
choly refrain in the matted grass and faded 
stubble, — then the hush is so complete that 
the heart acknowledges the spell laid upon it ; 
the soul involuntarily assumes the attitude of 
prayer ; and the experience that is born of the 
hour, silent and profound as it is, makes a 
close to the day as fitting as it is spiritually 
memorable. No man may yield himself to 
these influences, and say, in his heart, he is not 
both more and better than he was before. He 
secretly confesses — if he is wont to watch the 
silent processes of his own growth — that, 
with the days, he ripens, too ; and that, along 
with the season, he may become more and 
more glorious to the end. This is no more, 
then, the year's autumnal time than it is our 
own ; in its broad lap all the sheaves and 
hopes are heaped and pressed down. 

Ah, how we are carried back — far 

back, sitting and thinking of the yellow suns 
lying up against the side of the brown barn, — 
of the pumpkins piled on the rough oaken 
floor, — of the flock of turkeys crowding in the 



122 HOMESPUN. 

yard at sunset, — and of the little ones just 
come home from the woods, . scratched, and 
worn, and weary, and good for nothing more 
except bread-and-milk for supper and a soft 
bed under the roof ! Who does not like to sit 
down and live the past over again ? Who 
feels so sure of having got all there is to be 
had from these days and nights, — these morn- 
ings, and afternoons, and moonlit evenings, — 
that he does not care to go back once more, 
and glean for a little while after his earlier and 
briefer experiences ? 





THANKSGIVING. 

SNOW used to fall, in years gone by, a day 
or two before Thanksgiving. There was 
always a great deal of bustle in the city mar- 
kets, as also in the village stores and out 
among the farms. It is at Home^ however, 
where the genuine interest culminates, rather 
than about the city stalls or within the coun- 
try stores. 

On the very day before this fine old festival, 
they are up betimes at the Homestead, fod' 
dering the cattle and feeding the poultry, while 
the various chores, nameless for number, are 
looked after as they should be. Every indi- 
vidual feels an individual responsibility. Word 
has come, in good season, of the proposed re- 
turn to the old hearth of the entire list of 
brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, to- 
gether with the retinue of wives, husbands, and 
children. The District School has not " kept " 
since the week began, that the field might be 
quite clear of impediments to family enjoy- 



124 HOMESPUN. 

ment. The master has gone home, as well as 
others. The village stores are filled with fresh 
barrels of flour, and boxes of new spices, and 
piles of turkeys, geese, and chickens, in every 
vacant spot where they may lie. Here and 
there, against the dingy walls, hangs a brace 
of partridges, trapped by some skulking fellow 
who passes more than half his time roving in 
the woods ; or a solitary gray rabbit, brought 
in as a strictly personal speculation. 

Soon enough after breakfast, work begins 
in earnest. There are children in plenty all 
about the poultry-yards to witness and assist 
at the general slaughter. Turkeys are singled 
out for the block, and die " without a sign." 
Chickens follow in fateful order close after. 
There is an indiscriminate spirting of fresh 
blood all around the chop-log, a great flutter 
of feathers and headless hornpipes over the 
scattered chips, and the annual door-yard 
butchery is over. While, within the house, 
Industry has suddenly raised itself to the place 
of a tyrant. Everybody is busy, — is at work. 
The carcasses of fowls are getting plucked in 
a darkened back-room. Only the aged people 
sit idly complacent at the fireside, chatting of 
their fears about the weather and the coming 
home again of the children, during the day. 



THANKSGIVING. 125 

The kitchen is a sort of household mart, in 
which things great and small are each in its 
turn attended to. Hurry and bustle, though 
without actual confusion. Long tables and 
square tables, and small stands in the corners. 
Flour and dough, and plates and pans. So 
many sleeves rolled up, so many white arms 
made whiter with flour dust. Such pleasant 
South Sea smells of spices, and such clouds 
of irresistible steams and odors. So many big 
and little wooden trays, and round plates, — 
white, with blue edges. And spoons, and 
knives, and rolling-pins, and flour-dredgers. 
Delf trays, likewise, filled nearly full with 
mince-meat for the pies, long seasoned and 
moistened, with a wooden spoon sticking up. 
And large pans of stewed pumpkin, strained 
through sieves, and colored richly with milk 
that blankets itself, every night, with cream. 
And dishes of cranberry, all prepared for its 
deft transmutation into tarts. And pans of 
apple-sauce^ too, ready at hand for the pastry 
covers that are in process of making. 

By noon, or certainly within three hours 
after, the uncles and aunts begin to flock in, as 
doves come back to the olden windows. Sons 
and daughters along with them, too, running 
over with joy to get back to the home of 



126 HOMESPUN. 

Grandpa and Grandma. The old halls and 
passages ring with glad exclamations. Youth- 
ful voices and older ones intermingle, like gold 
and silver threads twisted together. A farmer 
son ; a merchant son ; a daughter, with a pro- 
fessional husband ; a bachelor son, the odd one 
of the family lot : — all return gladly, and feel 
it a religious duty to come back to this time- 
hallowed festival, and receive once again the old 
folks' blessing. A sort of " picked-up " dinner 
is set before them, which, perforce, must 
answer till the cheerful meal at evening. 

Than this no pleasanter picture of the old 
style of domestic happiness is to be painted on 
any imagination. One son strolls about the 
premises, inspecting with great interest the 
yards, the barns, the sheds, and the stock. 
Another sits at the warm fireside with the 
aged people, talking of the home affairs in-doors 
and out, — of wool, and grass, and poultry, and 
such other topics as properly appertain. And 
in this pleasantly placid way the chilly after- 
noon wears slowly by, the stream of talk 
swelling or shrinking with the change of moods 
and tenses there at the hearth. The pies and 
tarts and other like temptations that get baked 
in the huge kitchen oven before the night 
comes down to cover the chimneys, it would 
be idle to think of numbering. 



THANKSGIVING. 127 

Soon after ten o'clock, the next morning, as 
the tall clock in the corner makes musical proc- 
lamation, the several branches of the family- 
tree are collected together in the living-room, 
prepared for meeting. They come from the 
chambers, from the kitchens, — where they have 
been indulging in a protracted strain of morn- 
ing gossip, — from the stables, and the yards, 
and the barn. All are resolved to be talking at 
the same moment ; now directly at one an- 
other, and now crosswise. An uncle fetches in 
an armful of hickory and maple, that there may 
be a rousing fire on the hearth when they re- 
turn to dinner. Grandfather's hair shines like 
silver, brushed down so smoothly before and 
behind ; and his white cravat and modest shirt- 
frill impart to him an extremely venerable 
appearance, which does not fail to challenge 
Grandmother's admiration, as she familiarly 
chats with children and grandchildren in her 
wonted corner. 

There is a constant going to the glass at the 
further end of the room, and there is no end to 
the borrowing of pins, or to inquiries, one of 
the other, of how she <^ looked." A great deal 
of wondering, too, if there would be much of 
a turn-out at meeting. And much smoothing 
down of hair before, and brushing of coats and 



128 HOMESPUN. 

cloaks and capes. Till, presently, rattles around 
to the front door the grand family wagon, — 
a cross between a hay-cart and a chariotee, — 
followed by other smaller vehicles delegated to 
take up the family margin. Now the young 
people are in highest glee. They cannot find 
it in them to stand still, with such energy 
works the delight in their very feet and toes. 

Along the roads, the trees are bared of 
leaves, save the storm-defying white oaks ; 
while the fields stretch away on either side, 
bleak, snow-blotched, and desolate. A few 
wagons stand under the sheds about the meet- 
ing-house, whose owners are waiting and shiv- 
ering just within the door. The Thanksgiving 
sermon is like itself alone ; starting from an 
Old Testament text, of manifold divisions, full 
of a grateful spirit that takes at least half the 
year's credit to itself, and stuck all over with 
fervid allusions to the muscular souls that 
figure up and down the pages of Jewish script- 
ure. It is a performance of length withal; 
but people endure that now far better than 
they do on the annual Fast Day. It smacks, 
too, of a home-flavor, and revives the dear old 
family memories, and is warmed with the wine 
of those associations which cluster about the 
domestic hearthstone. Just as much a part of 



THANKSGIVING. 129 

the time as the annual dinner itself. Prelim- 
inary only to the " fat and sweet '' that make 
festive indeed the family board. Linking to- 
gether parents and children in still closer and 
more enduring bonds, — a kind of religious 
hyphen, that will let neither go. 

After church comes Dinner. To this part of 
the celebration better justice can be done with 
the knife and fork than with the pen-point. 
For a while all stand or sit grouped around the 
open fire that is blazing in the dining-room, 
hungry and waiting. The talk is brief and 
brisk, touching no topic that promises to re- 
quire much development. The long table is 
spread in the middle of the floor, extending al- 
most from wall to wall. The younger girls, 
domestic by instinct, love to assist in bringing 
in the various dishes, making earnest fun of it 
on the way. One and another of the mothers 
present offer to help, but they are all begged to 
be patient for but a very little while longer, — 
only a little while. 

In and out the door leading to the kitchen 
they troop, loading the tables and lightening 
themselves. The eyes around the hearth 
watch every movement eagerly. The tables 
are rapidly taking on an ornamental appear- 
ance. The boys nudge the girls, as some 



130 HOMESPUN. 

favorite dish is brought in and placed in full 
view, and their papillary glands are all awake 
for gratification. " Father " takes post at one 
end of the board, and deliberately runs his eyes 
up and down the same, to see if a single one 
out of so generous a flock may have been left 
out of the commissary's calculation. And 
finally, " Mother " walks in through the door 
from the kitchen, leisurely adjusting the cuffs 
of her sleeves, and then nods to Father that 
all is ready. He elevates his chin, as a sign of 
inquiry, to which she responds with a sec9nd 
nod. " Well," says he, " I believe dinner 's 
ready. Won't you all please to be seated ? '' 

How the intricate problem of seating them 
is solved, is a standing family mystery. Yet 
there they all are at last, snug and compact as 
herrings in a box, and with appetites beggaring 
description. The old folks are tenderly cared 
for, however, and occupy posts of honor. 
Parents and children, old and young, are 
sandwiched in about the board, imparting ad- 
ditional variety to the happy scene. The snow- 
white cloth, — the browned turkeys lying in 
state on huge platters in the middle of the 
table, — the flanking dishes of chickens, oys- 
ters, potatoes, squash, onions, celery, and other 
good things, - — the handsome and well-kept 



THANKSGIVING. 131 

old family service, tell the story of content and 
good cheer better than it can be set down upon 
paper. How delighted are the children with 
only the sight of the feast, exchanging smiles 
and telegraphing sly signals all around the 
table ! How interestedly they watch the carv- 
ing and disjointing of the fowls, as the white 
breast-meat falls away in such enticing slices 
from the sharp blade, and the anatomy of the 
subject becomes more and more palpable! 
And the preserves that have been brought forth 
from their dark hiding-places, — plum and pear 
and currant, — the jelly and sauce, too, how 
these tickle their youthful tastes even before 
contact, raising a livelier relish in their im- 
aginations ! 

Hard by, on a sideboard conveniently 
placed, that is a perfect miracle and puzzle of 
drawers and doors and out-of-the-way apart- 
ments, are arrayed the bountiful rations of 
pastry and dessert. A large pudding and a 
smaller one, of custard and plum ; together 
with manifold samples of the pies baked on 
the day previous, — mince, apple, squash, 
pumpkin, custard, and cranberry, and a very 
broad platter of tarts to match. The effect of 
all this side display is nowise lost upon the 
younger ones in the family party, nor indeed 



132 HOMESPUN. 

do the good housewives intend it shall pass 
unobserved of the elder participants of the 
festival. And there is tea as well, sending up 
its savory steams from the little side-stand, and 
waiting to be poured into the quaint little cups 
that are a genuine part of the homestead fur- 
nishing. 

And thus this high feast of New Eng- 
land goes on. Knives and forks make a brisk 
clatter, and voices mingle and ring all over the 
room. All faces are lighted with the joy which 
all hearts sincerely feel. It is busy work, for a 
time, what with the eating and talking to- 
gether ; and the poultry carcasses show signs 
of giving out; while the puddings and pies 
melt away in turn ; and, at last, the table ex- 
hibits but the wreck of the fat feast under 
which it so recently groaned. The children 
testify to their sense of surfeit by pushing 
back in their chairs and drawing difficult 
breaths. The older ones play with their knives 
or their tumblers, and essay short stories that 
require no great concentration of the faculties 
they have nearly put to sleep. Or the thrifty 
wives compare domestic receipts for this article 
and that, talking pints and pounds, sugar and 
juice, water and jars, till the snarl of household 
learning is hardly to be disentangled. 



THANKSGIVING. 133 

The evening brings its own pleasures again. 
Then the old-fashioned family games begin, — 
blind-man's-buff, puss-puss in the corner, snap- 
up around the chimney, forfeits, and their many 
ludistic congeners. The rooms all over the old 
house are lighted, and the echoes flock merrily 
up stairs and down. Grandfather has a 
smoky story* in his corner for such as choose to 
gather round and listen ; while Grandmother 
sits the centre of admiration for all the daugh- 
ters and daughters-in-law assembled. And 
they keep it up till late bed-time. It is glee 
without limit or qualification. The hour is 
one with two figures, when the embers are 
buried on the hearth, and the lights are extin- 
guished before the windows, and the crescent 
moon stoops low and virginal toward the west- 
ern horizon. 

But what a flood of happiness has swelled 
in every heart under the roof ! Not a single 
head is laid upon its pillow, but is filled with 
dear thoughts of the endless and inexhaustible 
delights of Home. Not a heart but beats more 
strongly with genuine love for those simple and 
homely pleasures which mere wealth can nei- 
ther give nor take away. 




RABD WINTJEBS, 

OLD people love to recount the trials thep 
have passed through, eager to make it ap- 
pear that the burden of this world's woes are 
fallen entirely upon themselves. The " last 
war " was a great deal harder to put up with 
than any boy's affair of these times; the fa- 
mous " September Gale " has never been ap- 
proached, for blowing capacity, by any tempest 
of more modern days ; there never was, and 
never will be, such a depression of the public 
spirits as during the year of the " embargo ; " 
and old-fashioned Winters have not been par- 
alleled by the dismallest spells of cold weather 
that have latterly frozen men stiff and stark, at 
high noon, by the road side. 

As far as downright hard winters go, it is 
more than likely they are in the right. Such 
snow-piles as they used to wallow and dig 
through, or ride upon when once safely en- 
crusted, we do not chance to stumble into 
in these days, sure enough. Then they had 



HARD WINTERS. 135 

sleighing four months on a stretch ; whereas, 
if we can get even four weeks of it, the season 
through, we brag as lustily as if we had been 
exposed to trials as tough as any that encom- 
passed the oldest inhabitants. Our mercury 
does sink pretty low, there 's no denying it ; 
but these " dreadful cold snaps " are never ex- 
pected to endure for more than three days, 
when all the weather prophets assure us the 
cold has " got to its height," can go not one 
half degree further if it would, and must of 
necessity make way forthwith for a relaxing 
southerly rain. 

We walk in " slosh " and mud, where our 
fathers went in whitest snow up to their knees. 
Frozen ice crunches under our tread, where the 
old settlers used to make the trodden snow- 
pavement squeal and squeak beneath their 
sturdy cowhide soles. Round-robin snow is 
enough to delight the children of this day; 
whereas their grandparents, at their age, would 
be out on the bleak country roads, helping the 
men " break out " with ox teams of a dozen 
and twenty to a string. In short, this is the 
millennial day of furnaces and double windows, 
of salted sidewalks and soft fur collars. In 
other times, they got warm out of doors, made 
friends with old Winter by defying him to do 



136 HOMESPUN. 

his biggest, and secured cheeks as ruddy as 
cranberries in October, that lasted them long 
after their hair turned silver. 

To get at the good old wintry times once 
more, we must either go back into the years, 
or into the country. In these days, the latter 
is quite as convenient, if not a trifle more so. 
Away back at the homestead, they are all 
snugly snowed in during several months. They 
may get out, to be sure, at intervals far apart, 
when the travelling has become fair and the 
sunny days entice them, — as at Christmas, 
and New Year's, and, possibly, two or three 
times more before the Spring breaking-up; 
but, as a standing rule of faith, they are wont 
to consider themselves fixed, firm and fast, at 
the old domicil, from about Thanksgiving time 
till the freshets of the new season announce 
the coming of the frost from the ground. And 
the life at home there is thus made rich and 
deep, because it is not fragmentary, irregular, 
and without defined purpose. No family could 
be hived so warmly and comfortably in the 
snows of our northern latitudes for five long 
months, without finding out more of themselves 
and one another than they knew the autumn 
before. 

What grown man of country nativity but 



HARD WINTERS. 137 

recalls the elegant sport he had, coasting down 
the long, winding New England hills with the 
girls, on the white moonlit evenings ? — and 
does not wish, with a swift bound of his heart, 
that he could now find any side of the world 
as smooth a sliding-place as he found one side 
then, with Julia and Jane and Margaret on the 
sled in front of him? Then, the sparkle of 
the snow in the moonshine was not one half 
as full of gladness as the sparkle that danced 
in the eyes of the girls ; nor were the reddest 
and richest tints that lay along the western 
horizon, in .those wintry sunsets, a tithe as red 
and ruddy as those that made their young lips 
so ripe and fine. Then, the ring of the skater's 
steel up along the frozen creeks and coves made 
clearer music for the heart than any ring of 
voices or dollars since. And the sleigh-bell 
chime, sounding so deep and clear irom that 
old strap that hung low beneath the white 
mare's belly, is incomparable, for sweetness 
and melody, with any of the vocal gymnastics 
or professional bell-ringing and tympanology 
of these modern days. 

At school, the winter fun was not to be 
matched with any quality of sport had since. 
The dry, baking heat of the iron box-stove 
made the labor of erecting and defending snow- 



138 HOMESPUN. 

forts at noon-time a necessity as well as a de- 
light; and the red hands, numbed with work- 
ing in the frozen meal, burned like coals of fire 
as soon as the afternoon tasks within doors be- 
gan again. And oh ! the kicking and rubbing 
aiid plunging, from the chilblains! Torment 
was never devised for young rebels like this! 
Prisoners in Calcutta Holes, the world over, 
could experience no direr distress than did we 
children at school, from about half-past two^ 
o'clock in the afternoon until the hour arrived 
for us to be spelled round out of the little 
Walker dictionary. Many has been the win- 
ter's day, when I would joyfully have given all 
I possessed, or ever hoped to possess, for the 
freedom of the outside of the building, that, 
once there, I might take off shoes and stock- 
ings, and run wild like a colt in the snow! 
People talk of suspense as the acutest agony ; 
it must be such have never had pesky chilblains 
in their childhood. 

It is a long and difficult way home for the 
younger children, and so the older ones take 
hold together and draw little Sis on the sled, 
who hangs on as for dear life, sticking forward 
two red stockings as straight as a couple of 
candlesticks. But the raw journey has a deli- 
cious ending in the joy with which grandpa- 



HARD WINTERS. . 139 

rents welcome us in the great living-room, and 
the kindness with which Mother urges us tow- 
ard the fire, promising bread-and-butter in gen- 
erous slices, the moment we are warm. And 
thenceforward till the thick darkness comes, it 
is the lad's work to go about home choring ; 
getting in the wood for the night and the kind- 
lings for the morning, tending the sheep in 
their sheds or the cows in their stalls, throwing 
down bedding and fodder, and taking an affec- 
tionate look by the way in upon the hens that 
have gone off early to roost. Sometimes he 
rebels in his little heart against the restraint 
this work imposes, especially if there happen 
to be a half-dozen other boys whom he would 
like to follow a half-mile further on the road, 
firing snow-balls as they go ; but, generally, he 
performs his tasks well and truly, looking for- 
ward to the arrival of supper-time and the 
fairy' evening scenes in the bright firelight af- 
terward. 

Yes, and it is the evening that remains crown 
and flower of all. The entertainments to be 
got by a child's imagination out of the pages 
of the " Arabian Nights," pale in their brilliancy 
before the delights that are extracted from these 
quiet and homely evening scenes, as they look 
to the boy who has progressed through weary 



140 HOMESPUN. 

experiences to riper manhood. The more rig- 
orous the day's climate has been, the warmer 
and cosier the hearth at evening ; the louder 
the wintry winds shriek at the windows and 
about the chimney-tops, the more bland and 
tropical seem the influences of the fire-heat at 
the hearthstone. The story is told ; the lesson 
is conned for the morrow ; or a neighbor drops 
in, and feels at once thoroughly welcome ; or 
the old folks fall a-gossiping of the ancient 
days when people rode about in pillions, and 
make the younger ones fairly gape with strained 
attention. The golden words of Plato are not 
more golden to his handful of students and 
disciples, than are the hours of these winter 
evenings to all of us who have such on the roll 
to remember. 

There were times, all along through these 
tough old winters, when the eaves would not 
drip for two and three weeks on the stretch, 
and on the south side of the house at that ; 
when the horse-trough was tight frozen, and 
the farmers' beasts refused to turn up to it on 
their way along the road, comprehending the 
Heedlessness of the labor afar off; when the very 
poultry, for days together, were not to be seen 
huddled on the sunny side of the woodshed, 
preferring to stay close where the warm scents 



HARD WINTERS. 141 

of the barn were a surer guarantee of comfort. 
Then the ice cracked with a sort of moan, 
pitched on a very low key, across all the ponds 
and coves and rivers. And the snow stuck like 
paint, or moss, to the sides of the forest trees 
against which it was plastered by the driving 
of the last storm. And the air was so still and 
cold, that the eyes turned to tears the moment 
they opened in its clear Arctic lake. And it 
were as easy to walk on pavements of brick 
and granite, as to set foot down upon the hard 
body of frozen snow that furnished the only 
floor for the world. And eggs split almost as 
soon as they were laid, — and cows refused to 
go out into the yard at all, — and the day was 
as still as the night, — and creation seemed to 
be waiting for a change in the weather before 
making another active movement. In these 
drear and silent nights of our northern winter, 
how thick stand the armies of the stars above, 
writing all over God's skyey dome in hiero- 
glyphics that read with an eternal meaning ! 
There is one class of men, especially, that 
appears to appropriate all the out-door poetry 
of this rigorous and stern season ; and they are 
the Wood-choppers. Sturdy Norse-folk indeed 
are they, emblazoned with frosty locks and 
beards, and toying like children with the winds 



142 HOMESPUN, 

that rush forth howling upon them from their 
lairs in the forest. Many a day have I envied 
the wintry lot of the wood-chopper. There 
seemed to be a nameless mystery in his occu- 
pation, that clothed him all over, in my eyes, 

' with a garment of romance. He wandered off 
by faintly outlined cattle-paths, in the morn- 
ing, into the woodland field of his labor, — axe 
under his arm, and dinner in the deep pocket 

- of his green-baize jacket, — and was not heard 
from again until the coming of the red sunset. 
His long day, so uninterrupted and calm, so 
packed with thought, whole and entire in the 
solitude, and fragrant with the balm yielded by 
the cleft hearts of noble trees, was to my imag- 
ination like no other man's day, going through 
the whole line of the alphabet of names or pro- 
fessions. 

He dealt out blows with his axe that rang 
like the strokes of fate alon^ the aisles of the 
forest. The moan of the falling tree on the 
woodland slope was echoed in a low and dol- 
orous key across the pond, and far into the 
dreary reaches on the other side. I have come 
upon him as he sat at his noon luncheon, too ; 
under the lee of a rail-fence, or a fallen trunk, 
tossing crumbs and cheese-rinds around him 
for the partridges that have become familiar ; 



HARD WINTERS. 143 

sunk clear down in the quiet lap of his own rude 
contemplations, and, now and then, taking the 
altitude of the solar disk, like any lonely mar- 
iner on his little deck in mid-ocean. I always 
liked to study the character and habits of 
these rugged, Saxon, hirsute, unflinching 
heroes of the wood ; and deemed them the 
children of Winter, with thews and sinews 
toughened by the ceaseless assault of the 
winds, and nerves made steel by the frosts and 
snow^s they ,daily defied, and hearts all of 
knotty oak in the endless changes and chances 
of the weather. 

This habit of hybernation, of literally going 
into " winter quarters," — like troops, or some 
animals, or the waser sort of birds, — is just 
the one that gives to the season its attractive 
peculiarity ; the difference between man and 
beast being this, that the former may so pro- 
vide aliment for himself during this period that 
he need not actually consume his own in- 
crease, as bears are said by naturalists to " fall 
back on " their own fat. It is his period of a^- 
5mt7<2^/ow rather, when he makes all that he has 
stored up really his oivn by an interior and gen- 
uine experience, acquired beneath his own roof 
and at the side of his own hearth. 

Old men love dearly to sit about and tell — 



144 HOMESPUN. 

so long as they can find believing listeners — 
of the hardships of their early winters, as of 
seasons out of the reach of parallels. A good 
deal of it, of course, comes of the lapse of 
years, whose wonderful mirage imparts its own 
exaggeration to every object and scene. In 
the village stores they meet on winter after- 
noons, and, after letting the snow melt from 
their heavy boots, rake over again the tough 
and. charred knots that slumber in the embers 
of the past. There surely was never so cold a 
winter as that of eighteen hundred and — 
ever so far back ; then, the post- rider had to 
travel on snow-shoes, and throw the mail-bags 
ahead of him as he went ; then, the sleighing 
held good from before Thanksgiving till after 
the Governor's Fast ; the roads were banked 
up and impassable for weeks together; the 
wild geese went south earlier than they were 
ever known to go before, and did not return 
till people had got almost tired of looking for 
them in the Spring ; the squirrels were seen 
out upon the walls and fences but once, or 
twice at most, during the whole winter ; and 
some sheep that got buried in the snow by ac- 
cident, away over on a hill with a guttural In- 
dian name, subsisted on one another's wool 
until they were discovered by their bleat and 
dug out into day again. 



HARD WINTERS. 145 

These stories are a sort of family heirloom ; 
or, at best, they have root in the local soil, and 
help weave the sentiment of the neighborhood 
into a firmer social fabric. The cold snaps of 
December are a match for the sweltering heats 
of August ; but people love better to rehearse 
the experiences of the former, just as they 
would rather dilate on vigorous contests they 
have borne a part in, than go over the scenes 
of a mere endurance, in which they were not 
permitted to strike a blow. 



10 



ONLY A LITTLE. 

Not too much for me : a little will answer : — 

A roof that lets down its low, sheltering eaves, 
An old apple-tree at the end of the garden, 

With a robin's nest hid in its chambers of 
leaves ; 
Some red honeysuckles in bloom on the ledges, 

A carpet of grass spread in front of the door, 
A great rock lying down by the bars of the pas- 
ture, 

And chestnut-trees growing about in good store. 



What larger want we than our snug little parlor? 
What cosier place than our porch in the rear? 
We can sit in them through the sweet twilights 
of summer, 
And keep love alive through the whole of the 
year. 
Could I love her the more in the grandest of 
mansions, 
Or feel her deep trust any more in great halls? 
Would she seem just as dear in a hum of strange 
voices, 
As sitting here by me within our own walls? 



ONLY A LITTLE. 147 

These closely clipped lawns, and these fanciful 
vistas, — 
These statues, and fountains, and gate-lodges, 
too, — 
These swans on the ponds, in their afternoon 
barges, — 
These stables, and kennels, and everything 
new : — 
There is nothing about them that 's home-bred 
and simple, 
As a footpath, a wicket, a rose by the wall ; 
I would not give up even one rustic treasure. 
For the charm, or the cost, or the name of 
them all. 

The meadow-brook makes me a right merry 
neighbor ; 
The quail plays his pipe through the hot after- 
noons ; 
The squirrels run over the old oak-tree branches ; 
And whippoorwills come in the summer-night 
moons. 
Just over that hill are the sweet berry-pastures ; 
This other way stretch the deep woods where 
I roam ; 
The birds are awake in the gray of the morning; 
And roses look into our windows at home. 

It cost but a trifle: more love than hard money; 
And so it will last us as long as love's store; — 



148 HOMESPUN. 

'T is the heart that makes rich, or the whole life 
is pauper, 
And happiness gets through the smallest sized 
door. 
Not too much for me ; no poor packhorse would 
I be, 
To load up with riches for others to come; — 
This world is compressed in the smallest of meas- 
ures, 
And the widest of realms is a dear little 
Home. 



BOOK SECOND, 



VICINAGE. 



" There is nothing like New England ; and nothing in New Eng- 
land like its interior districts.'''' — Judd's " Margaret." 




THE TOWN MEETING, 

/~\UR only real democracy exists in the 
^-^ country towns. The rest is but limited 
and representative ; while here it thrives in its 
original vigor and without restriction. 

In the crowd of little towns that sprinkle the 
plains and crown the hill-tops of New Eng- 
land, independent sovereignties as they are, 
scenes as full of interest are annually pre- 
sented — to the inhabitants and freeholders, 
certainly — as the Agora of Athens used to 
offer in that puissant and classic little city's 
palmy days. It is of just as much conse- 
quence who shall represent the town in the 
next legislature as, in Attic history, who was 
worthy to command the fleet, or lead the land 
forces against the invading Persians. The de- 
liberation on local questions — as, how much 
money shall be appropriated for mending the 
highways, what tax shall be laid for enlarging 
the old school-house, and whether the township 
is determined to defend its sovereignty against 



152 HOMESPUN. 

the encroachments of a jealous neighbor, — 
provokes as much interest, and of as intense a 
character, too, as did any of those larger topics 
that swelled the soul of Demosthenes into 
phillipics which will be read by the latest gen- 
eration that dwells on the planet. 

At nine o'clock the bell rings, — the church 
bell. For the town meetings of the Homespun 
stamp are usually held in the meeting-house, 
where many an one secretly delights to take 
sly revenge on the sanctimonious necessities 
of his Sabbath-day conduct, and so goes about 
spitting and whittling pretty much as he will. 
The first work to which the assembled demoi 
address themselves, is that of choosing a Mod- 
erator ; for a ship might as easily be worked 
without a compass or a helm, as a New Eng- 
land town-meeting try to get along without 
some controlling mind to tone down its waxing 
energy and enthusiasm. Generally, this im- 
posing office is a gift to one of the deacons, if 
he is an elderly person, and the town be a 
small one ; or, in case of contesting secta- 
rian sentiments, it is laid with all sobriety upon 
one of the most staid and dignified out of the 
whole population. He assumes the office, not 
troubling himself to return thanks, however, — 
raps out order on the table with his tough 



THE TOWN MEETING. 153 

knuckles, — and asks the assembly to listen 
with due devoutness to a prayer from the lips 
of the minister. This is a custom peculiarly 
of New England origin ; and if it result in no 
positive good, it cannot be denied that it works 
no permanent harm. Perhaps the momentary 
hush of voices within better prepares the peo- 
ple to go seriously about the business of the 
day. 

The Selectmen — an honored Board, that we 
can only pity the fierce Grecian democracies 
for having had to go without — range them- 
selves near the Moderator ; a clerk is chosen, 
who gets up and reads the " warning," — a 
copy of which may likewise be studied on the 
sign-post not far from the door ; the business 
designated on the call is taken up in order, and 
forthwith proceeded with according to imme- 
morial custom ; and soon the general buzz of 
voices and shuffle of feet betoken the interest 
in which all are alike absorbed. 

If it be Election Day, the people are directed 
by the Moderator, in a loud voice that is aimed 
at the singers' gallery, to prepare their votes for 
State Officers, members of Congress, Repre- 
sentatives to the Legislature, and Town Offi- 
cers, to be deposited in the different ballot- 
boxes which he may designate, and to pass 



154 HOMESPUN. 

round — " if they please " — from the right to 
the left, — " to avoid confusion." This is the 
fun of the day. The contesting political par- 
ties have their challenging committees close 
to the polls, whose duty it is to dispute the 
right of one and another to vote, for reasons 
valid or trivial ; these reasons being taken into 
the revolving thoughts of the row of Select- 
men sitting close by, with countenances 
equally serious. One voter has n't lived in 
the town as long as he ought ; another has been 
convicted of theft, or some other petty crime, 
and a certified copy of his conviction in court 
is all ready to be produced by the side chal- 
lenging him. This one, now coming up with 
such an air of innocence, is directly going to 
be charged with the crime of not knowing how 
to read ; and a copy of the Constitution being 
handed him, the work he makes over the hie- 
roglyphics of its letters can be paralleled by 
nothing better than the ignorance of scores 
around of anything akin to its meaning. The 
energy with which this challenging business is 
pushed, and the tough tenacity with which the 
doubt or denial of another's capability as a 
voter is made good, are excellent illustrations 
of those qualities of character that make the 
New England man exactly what he is, and 



THE TOWN MEETING. 155 

nothing different, as his friends farther to the 
South would have him. 

"When the voting on Representatives grows 
sluggish, the Moderator straightens his legs 
and asks them, in that same Olympian tone, if 
they " are all voted ; " soon after which, the 
counting by the Selectmen begins, others 
having meanwhile stood by and kept tally on 
their own account. Now it becomes exciting 
indeed. It may be the vote is very close ; in 
that case, the outside counters and tally-men 
are as much in the dark as the rest, since they 
may have been deceived in their expectations 
from a few men's ballots, not knowing which 
side offered them the latest drink at the tavern. 

Oftentimes it is announced from the Chair, 
that " there has been no choice, and you will 
therefore please prepare your votes again." 
This moderatorial edict is echoed up in the 
bell-tower, a few pulls at the clapper proclaim- 
ing to all stragglers, and to those who would 
like to go home after voting once, that it is 
necessary to go over it all again. And then 
begins the tug of war. The whippers-in of 
each party fall upon their victims with the ra- 
pacity of harpies. One never before witnessed, 
and never will again, such personal partiality 
of the high for the low, and the clean for the un- 



156 HOMESPUN. 

clean ; nor heard such protestations of undying 
friendship and devotion. It will take but one 
more vote, — or two, or three, to carry this 
thing clear over to our side ! — and the zeal 
flames up in astonishing disproportion to the 
chances. 

Perhaps, even the next time, no election is 
effected ; nor the next, nor the next. Then the 
Statute makes provision for the case, and an- 
other election is ordered for another day. But 
the general tickets are not taken from the boxes 
and counted and proclaimed, until the hour lim- 
ited by the law has passed ; before which time, a 
pretty strict tally having been kept through the 
day by party lieutenants, it is generally known 
how the balloting stands, and a small knot 
only is therefore collected about the polls. 
When, however, the general result is declared, 
some enthusiastic partisan always stands ready 
to give the bell-rope a vigorous twitch or two 
in honor of his own side, and it is understood 
all through the town that election is finally over. 
A new notch has been nicked in the town's 
history. 

A great deal of interest is let down upon 
this occasion through the side-lights ; that is to 
say, the oyster-stands near the horse-sheds and 
about the " Green," as well as the sly drinking 



THE TOWN MEETING. 157 

* 

scenes over at the tavern, or in the little back- 
room of the grocery store, furnish many a 
needed illustration for the work more legiti- 
mately performed in the meeting-house. To 
suppose that a New England election could be 
successfully conducted without the help of 
stewed oysters, eaten out of blue-rimmed 
bowls with pewter spoons, is to betray the 
ignorance of the person who ventures the con- 
jecture. Or to believe that a due head of 
partisan steam could be kept up without regu- 
lar and repeated levies on the casks of Boston 
rum, that are tucked away in the dark recesses 
of the back-store over the way, is evidence of 
a lack of familiarity with these matters, not to 
be pardoned in any native commentator. Then 
there is much character to be studied in the 
talk that goes on among the knots sprinkled 
about the doors, across the road, out near the 
horse-sheds, and over the Green. The Con- 
gressional Debates reported for years in the 
" Globe," will bear but a slender comparison 
with these for originality of views, cogency of 
reasoning, or close personal application. Every 
son of his mother in New England is a born 
talker, save only the tongue-tied ones ; and he 
does no talking so thoroughly as this to which 
he "calculates" to devote himself on town- 
meeting day. 



158 HOMESPUN. 

They hold a second convention of the sov- 
ereigns, in another season of the year ; when 
the strictly local interests are debated and dis- 
posed of as they ought to be. At this they 
choose their selectmen, justices of the peace, 
tithing-men, and — greatest of all — fill the an- 
cient and honorable office of " hog-reeve." In 
many localities this last popular gift is as 
highly esteemed, and bestowed with quite as 
much seriousness, as those other ones which 
bring the recipients a little more prominently 
before the eyes of the world. In others, how- 
ever, it has mysteriously parted with its ancient 
dignity, and is not much better than a pasqui- 
nade, to fling at the head of some one who 
happens either to be odious or the town butt. 
An instance of sharp retaliation for the unex- 
pected bestowal of this honor just now occurs 
to me. A certain Judge, — a man of large 
attainments and sharp-edged sarcasm, — who 
found himself one day elevated to this position 
by a secret conspiracy among those whom he 
had not altogether pleased hitherto, seeing the 
delight with which his election was greeted, 
stepped up on one of the benches next him, and 
blandty asked if those who had been good 
enough to vote for him would gratify him so 
much as to rise in their places. Nothing 



THE TOWN MEETING. 159 

daunted, the conspirators got up in a defiant 
body, meeting his open look with their ill- sup- 
pressed jeers. "Ah! that will do!" returned 
the Judge ; " I thank you. I only wanted to 
see about how many hogs I had got to have the 
care of! " Scrupulous care was had, after that 
year, in offering to others an honor which had 
once disgraced none but those who bestowed it. 

The natural aptitude for affairs that so 

marks the character of the men of New Eng- 
land, is discoverable here in their little town- 
meetings. , There is many a young fellow, just 
through his college studies, who would gladly 
exchange all his acquired readiness in translat- 
ing the Greek and Latin poets for the practical, 
up-and-down knowledge of a respectable se- 
lectman, or town assessor. As for the science 
of debate, it would be hard to find bodies of 
men anywhere who could utter as much in so 
few and pointed words. If they do debate a 
matter, it is not for the sake of displaying their 
reading or their rhetoric ; but they go straight 
to the core of it, and make it appear very 
shortly whether a new proposition, or plan, is 
likely to be " worth the while " or not. That 
is the mighty touchstone of all their views. 
The same thrift that puts the individual on the 
road to independence, is made to pave the 
town's highway to power. 



160 



HOMESPUN. 



And these are the men who hold in 

their hard an.d honest hands the safety of our 
country, — of our all. Verily, the town-meet- 
ing is the nursery of the national life. In this 
little and remote assembly are fashioned the 
principles of the men that make us just what 
we are before the world. 





THE COUNTRY STOBE. 

FOK lack of theatre, music hall, fantoccini 
or riding in the Park, the people of the in- 
terior districts are compelled to fall back on 
something else in the line of amusement, than 
which no entertainment could well be held in 
higher esteem. It is the Country Store. This 
modest " institution " is as distinct, too, and 
well defined in the social landscape as the spire 
of Trinity, or the gray shaft on Bunker Hill. 

The whole population of the neighborhood 
resort to it with regularity ; — all the loungers, 
all the idlers, all who have done up their weary 
day's work, all the town gads and gossips in 
trousers, as well as all those who go for mo- 
lasses in jugs, for nails, tobacco, and raisins, — 
loiter, and talk, and listen in this most conven- 
ient place of public reception. And if store 
and Post-office chance to be combined, the 
flocking of the sovereigns, with wives and off- 
spring, fairly puts one out in any attempt at 

description. Besides the sugar, nails, tea, cod" 
u 



162 HOMESPUN, 

fish, soap, and brooms, there lie all the letters 
that are addressed personally to the men and 
women of the town. 

Truly, an item to be thought of. The 

sum total of all their correspondence with the 
strayed-away cousins, nieces, nephews, and chil- 
dren. Therefore at this little hive the swarm- 
ing town collects. Therefore do they come 
hither, evening after evening, picking up waifs 
of news and watching like paid detectives the 
postmaster's distribution of the letters. There- 
fore do they hustle and bustle around that func- 
tionary's person when the mail-bag is fetched 
in from the coach, and proffer assistance in as- 
sorting the miscellaneous newspapers which 
he empties over the counter. Offering advice, 
when it is needed and when it is n't. Submit- 
ting comments — original and assorted — ^on 
all classes of topics, with such sly foot-notes 
as one may not at first understand. 

Then a country store is a strangely quiet 
place, of an afternoon, whether in summer or 
winter. Save when, perhaps, some little girl 
patters in to exchange a skein of thread, the 
flies and the rural merchant have it entirely to 
themselves. If the place is in charge of a 
spruce young clerk, in lieu of the master, he 
employs himself with brush and oils at the lit- 



THE COUNTRY STORE. 163 

tie cracked mirror behind the high desk, and 
lets the flies sun themselves in sleepy knots 
over the floor. 

It is not less a realm of doziness, either, in 
planting-time, and through the sweaty spell of 
haying. In the former season, the men are about 
the gardens and off over their farms, and a fox 
might take a leisurely trot through the town 
street without attracting the eye of master or 
hound. Perhaps an enterprising pedler, atop 
of a bright red wagon, trundles up to the door- 
step, and, from his canopied box, " passes the 
time of day" with the prompt clerk, asks for 
latest news, and offers essences at the very low- 
est " figger." Or a stray cow comes tearing 
off the succulent grass like silk near the door, 
perhaps with a bell strapped about her neck, 
and putting the town more completely to sleep 
with its somnolent melodies. 

This is the store in the country town, or the 
village. It sometimes stands, however, away 
by itself at the crossing of two roads, with the 
proprietor's dwelling in close propinquity ; its 
entire front protected from burglars by the an- 
cient swing-shutter, and barricaded with boxes 
and buckets, half filled with beans and dried 
apples and oats, that are tilted on the broad 
shelf just under the window ; — I do not be- 



164 HOMESPUN. 

lieve a lonelier spot can be found in the whole 
range of puritan New England ; a mill-pond in 
a faded December afternoon is a place of re- 
sort, by comparison, — a hemlock thicket at 
sunset is noisy in contrast with its sepulchral 
desolateness. 

But when farming does not drive, and leisure 
is to be had in solid junks by all who want it, 
the store is not altogether so bare of interest to 
the casual observer. Huddled as the talking 
population love to be found, their portraits, or 
full-lengths, may then be readily taken. The 
men and the boys, perched on barrels or the 
counters, either swing their feet and gossip, or 
swing their feet and spit. If it is winter, they 
cuddle up to the dull box-stove, and polish the 
long pipe with their hard palms as coolly as 
if they were salamanders. They are stowed 
in unseen corners, too, — the young fellows in 
particular, — where they work over colorless, 
but sometimes rank, jokes in half whispers, and 
snicker in nasal unison over their odd confi- 
dences about the girls. The small boys drink 
in what falls, grinning bashfully when the larger 
ones laugh ; they are taking their early lessons 
faithfully and well. 

Of winter evenings, the stove, crammed with 
seasoned sticks, roars like any menagerie lion. 



THE COUNTRY STORE. 165 

No January winds without can drown its 
growling sound. The loungers are gathered 
in a great open circle, each with a hand erected 
for a screen. There it is the affairs of the 
nation are sifted ; there each town sovereign 
closes and grapples with his dissenting neigh- 
bor, and finds his own personal niche among 
those occupied by the local Worthies. The 
minister's last sermon comes up for analysis 
at this rustic round-table ; when the astonish- 
ing fact is revealed, that they are all not less 
profound theologians than marvellous masters 
of state craft and civil polity. 

Or, on topics of gallantry, of reputation, of 
property, of talents, — this is the Country Club 
to begin at the beginning, and not leave off till 
the end. I have many a time sat and won- 
dered, looking at them thus engaged, what pos- 
sible escape-valve would serve their turn, if 
this free-and-easy privilege at the store should 
chance to be cut off I K they talk only un- 
qualified scandal now^ they might be guilty of 
the sin of provoking it then; — and which, I 
beg to know, on your conscience and honor, 
would be worse ? If some of us may not serve 
the turn of harmless local historians, or annal- 
ists, then we must, perforce, go at it as heroes, 
and become naughty men. 



166 HOMESPUN. 



One may as well style the country store 



the Forum for the town in which it stands. 
Neither the Forum at old Rome, nor the Agora 
at Athens, showed greater in their own way 
and day. It is a really homespun institution, 
— everything we have is an " institution," in 
this country, — and wears like the sterling fab- 
ric's own self. Here are held the local debates, 
nightly, as in Parliament, through the cold 
weather. Here issues are joined, and the tal- 
low candles flare applause or sputter disappro- 
bation. 

Or, you may say it is the place of the 

town assizes. In some country settlements, 
there are men who are bloody Jeffreys at heart, 
delighting to bully the rest with their decisions, 
and permitting neither appeal nor extenuation. 
In others, you will find honest Matthew Hales 
enough to keep sweet the whole body of public 
sentiment by their fair, open, and well-balanced 
judgments. For judgments are to be made 
up, — must be made up ; that being the " chief 
end of man," in these little social bailiwicks. 

To the store flock the farmers, in ear- 
nest with their spring w^ork, after seeds and 
manures and agricultural implements. Boys 
run thither on errands for their mothers, their 
sisters, and themselves. Thrifty housewives 



THE COUNTRY STORE. 167 

drive up before the door at an early forenoon 
hour, in the summer time, and go in to make 
barter of eggs, and cheese, and stocking-yarn 
for cotton cloth, or calico, or new shoes with 
a proper " power " of squeak in them. The 
girls flock, with red blushes burning in their 
cheeks, to see if anything lies over for them 
in the mail, or to exchange a few words with 
the sleek-haired clerk, or to finger, for the 
twentieth time, the limited stock of berages, 
prints, and mousselin de laines which he ever 
stands ready to spread about the counter. 

You will see a whole caravan of old family 
cobs about the premises, some with bob-tails 
and some with switch, holding down their 
heads and drowsing away the hours as if they 
had cropped poppy-heads instead of green clo- 
ver, for their summer morning repast. And 
elderly females are visible, too, climbing frisk- 
ily into and out of their open wagons, the 
day's successful barter giving them the nerve 
required to keep them from falling. 

As politicians, the men who gather statedly 
at the country store strain the limits of com- 
mon comprehension. On city rostrums, it* is 
thought the political notorieties sometimes 
give a start to the public pulse ; but at the 
store, the work is personal, and striking, and 



168 ' HOMESPUN. 

thorough, beyond example. They make it 
their grand point here to corner a man ; after 
which operation, it is thought he is not worth 
putting forth much strength upon. It is held 
to be the coronal feature of argumentative 
skill and power, to get an opponent " where he 
can't get away." And so it is, according to 
Socrates himself, who had an awfully teazing 
way of putting questions ; — or agreeably to 
' Father Aristotle, who led by the nose the rest 
of the dialecticians of his day, and impressed 
his system on all the schools of Europe after 
him. To " argue the point " is esteemed one 
of the divine Rights of Man ; and no govern- 
ment or authority shall dare take it out of 
their hands. 

Yet no two persons are permitted the lux- 
ury of having it all to themselves; the rest 
claim their privilege of breaking down the 
ropes of the ring, and taking a hand as well. 
Political newspapers are published chiefly for 
these very friends of ours, who devour them as 
eagerly as rich men once used to consume wid- 
ows' houses. For them the bulky " Congress- 
ional Debates " are printed (on execrable con- 
tract paper) by authority of Congress ; and to 
their columns they repair for ammunition with 
the regularity of artillerists in action to caissons 



THE COUNTRY STORE. 169 

and portable magazines. No good deacon, 
zealous beyond discretion, ever hurled texts at 
the head of a doubter with such overwhelming 
effect, as do these native balearists rain down 
dates, names, and quotations on the battered 
skulls of political contestants. Theirs the task 
of Cerberus and Rhadamanthus both ; they 
form the Caucus, — the Congress, — the real 
Democracy. Wars and rumors of wars ; elec- 
tions and estimated results ; reputations, both 
public and private ; cases in court, — the doc- 
trinal soundness of the minister, — the state 
of the crops and the weather ; — none think 
themselves their equals in the discussion and 
disposal of these topics all. 

It is excellent for an open and sunny 

heart, in the autumn season, to let the eyes 
run round among the crook-necks, and yellow 
mastodons of pumpkins, and barrels of clean, 
white beans, and thin-skinned potatoes, that 
garnish and stuff out the apartment, from ceil- 
ing to cellar-door. The store has then been 
transformed into the town museum of agricul- 
ture. Here the good farmers hold their in-door 
local shows ; here quietly rehearse the labors of 
the season just ending, and estimate personal 
gains in* oats, corn, and potatoes. They make 
calculations on the number of cows they will 



170 HOMESPUN, 

winter, and compute (in money) the amount 
of fleece wool the " wimmen folks " will get 
carded and rolled for the cold-weather season 
of spinning. Their talk is of crops, of fruit, 
horses, sheep, and cattle ; — of girth, and 
draught, and year-olds, and fattening by stall- 
feeding. 

If you ever drive through one of these back 
towns in pleasant weather, it will pay you well 
to feed your beast a half-peck of oats (last 
year's are best, the farmers say,) in the feed- 
ing-trough under the shed, and lounge into 
the store yourself for the pure recreation of 
seeing and being seen. The store-keeper will 
not be behind with substantial civilities; you 
shall make no complaint for lack of attention 
from the gathering bystanders until your horse 
has eaten his last oat and set up a neighing 
for more ; and the inevitable codfish and string 
of onions hanging on the outside wall will 
haunt you with dreams of traffic and commer- 
cial adventure, till you even set foot on Long 
Wharf again and welcome the coasters from 
the Banks and Old Weathersfield. 




THE COUNTRY TAVEBN. 

IT was a sort of half-way house between 
home and the open world. You might 
style it Home on the Road. It was the limit 
where the shyer and tenderer domestic feelings 
began to let go their hold, and give place to 
the bold and bustling influences of the world. 
The hotel of the city has little in common 
with the tavern of gone-by days, and can 
scarcely claim kinship. That was a peculiar 
social construction, shaped and furnished ex- 
actly to the purposes it was to serve. We 
find nothing like it in these times, not even in 
the country itself. 

On the subject of inns, Dr. Johnson's dic- 
tum may be worth quoting again : — " No, 
sir," said he, " there is nothing which has yet 
been contrived by man, by which so much 
happiness is produced as by a good tavern or 
inn." And he was fond of repeating Shen- 
stone's well-known lines in support of his sen- 
timent : — 



172 HOMESPUN. 

" Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 
Where'er his stages may have been, 
May sigh to think he still has found 
The warmest •u-elcorae at an inn." 

The romances of Sir Walter are full of inns 
of every name and character. There is inn 
talk of the most attractive sort in " Don Quix- 
ote" and " Gil Bias." Sterne and Smollett and 
Fielding carry us off by the arm to the near- 
est tavern, where good cheer abounds, and 
care is soon dissipated, and the hard walls of 
real life become the merest boundaries of air. 

Shakspeare, too, was a confirmed tavern 
haunter, and knows not how to keep it a se- 
cret in his comedies. Multitudes of his finest 
fancies flew up to the clear sky of his mind 
while sitting in his favorite " Boar's Head " at 
Eastcheap. Ben Jonson — '' rare Ben " — 
was altogether at home in the tavern's inspir- 
ing purlieus ; and ruled the roast there in the 
midst of his learned and witty compeers. Dry- 
den sat at " Will's," dispensing oracles and 
judgments to listening circles for all London. 
But jolly Sir John, — -that hero without cour- 
age, that never-full butt of old-fashion sack, — 
he remains chief and hugest of all tavern- 
haunters of any abiding repute. His great 
creator conceived him in the heart of the place 
v/here the best of his corpulent life was spent. 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 173 

Everybody who reads knows his habit of tak- 
ing his ease in his own inn. 

The wits of Charles the Second's time, and 
of Anne's, were wont to make of the tavern 
their council chamber ; and at length it be- 
came a forcing-house for all the sayings, fine 
and coarse, that delighted the town or pro- 
voked to reading. Who loved the old haunts 
better than Dick Steele, — that pattern of un- 
thrift and preacher of true gallantry ? Who 
could conceive, in their little back-rooms, a 
nobler Cato, or profounder judgments on the 
genius of Milton, or an honester country 
'squire than Sir Roger de Coverly, than Addi- 
son, with his black bottle at his elbow ? And 
there was poor Burns, — he frequented the 
taverns when he would better have been at the 
tail of his plough, turning up mice-nests and 
mountain daisies ; and yet the tavern more 
or less fed his genius, as it lagged and loitered 
along the rough road he was destined to 
travel. 

Going backwards again : one takes it to 
heart like a pleasant experience of his own, to 
read what old Izaak Walton, father of all good 
and quiet anglers, said and did, when himself 
and Venator came, early in the morning, to 
the little inn where the room was stuck about 



174 HOMESPUN. 

with ballads on the wall, and the white sheets 
of the hostess had such a sweet smell of lav- 
ender : — "I '11 now lead you to an honest ale- 
house, where we shall find a cleanly room, lav- 
ender in the windows, and twenty ballads 
stuck about the wall." 

This ideal inn, which Father Walton de- 
scribes with such enticing simplicity, is the 
very one that, of all others, has taken captive 
our fancy. In lieu of scents of sour sack and 
spoiling punch, we seem to smell the sweet 
savors of primrose and dill, and the delicate 
boquet of the bottle of elderberry wine which 
the hostess takes down so choicely from the 
cupboard. 



An old tavern used to be, in the days I 



am calling up again with such fondness, the 
synonym of comfort and repose and plenty. 
We have few or none of these ancient affairs 
left now. They and the stage-coach were 
twinned in the inventor's brain ; and when 
one fell into disuse, it was natural for the other 
to pass out of mind also. To keep tavern 
without the grand feeder of a stage line would 
have been making bricks without straw. . 

The railways have, with a merciless straight- 
line energy, cut and slashed up the pleasant 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 175 

old solitary turnpikes and quiet by-roads 
where the stage-coach once rattled its wheels 
and smacked its whip, — and the life-blood of 
ancient tavern-keeping has thus been drained 
off into a swifter channel ; so that " entertain- 
ment for man and beast " put away its dusty 
but honest toggery, and followed the style and 
whim of the railway. Hence, if you look for 
" entertainment," — which socially implies 
what is domestic and cheerful for the tired 
traveller, you will now find nothing more than 
" refreshments," — which mean a sanded floor, 
wire-dish covers in blue, swarms of flies, and a 
coming train. Ah ! but these times are not 
those times ! The sorriest of it all is, too, that 
none of us will live to know the broad and 
hearty reality of the by-gone days again ! 

Still, it is due to posterity that the memory 
of the Old Tavern, and of the many kind offi- 
ces it has so cheerfully performed for humanity, 
be kept green. Let "us live it all over again, 
though it be but in the reproduction of a 
youthful dream. 

In the first place, and to begin at the 

beginning, it was a wonderful mart for coaches. 
They stood under almost every shed that made 
a convenient lean-to in the spacious yard, and 
in nearly every stage of existence, — from the 



176 HOMESPUN. 

freshly varnished one, just come in, to the pot- 
bellied old veteran that had patiently carried 
well-nigh a whole generation over the hills. On 
some the dust was piled thickly ; stable-boys 
were busy washing up the wheels of others ; 
here and there was a decrepit customer, unques- 
tionably crippled by an uncalculating whip with 
a cruel overload ; but the prevailing expression 
of the yard was that of coaches. Had the 
place been cleaned of them at a single vigor- 
ous sweep, it would have looked as empty as a 
library with the books gone from the shelves. 

In the centre of this tavern court-yard, a 
pump, with a jolly squeak that seemed to start 
up business all about the place. Horses were 
led out to the great trough under its nose, and 
sometiQies slipped away from the boys who led 
them, snorting and tearing back to the stable 
again. A long and broad " stoop " behind the 
low-roofed house, whereon were set pails, pans, 
baskets, and other housekeeping utensils, — a 
very miscellaneous assortment. Beds crammed 
out through the upper back windows, for a brief 
morning airing. Doves wheeling and tumbling 
about, or setting up their monotonous domestic 
cries close under the barn eaves. 

There used to be a wide and spacious hall 
reaching from the front entrance of the house, 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 177 

and a broad and inviting porch, the picture of 
hospitality, with an ample seat on either side, 
projected to correspond. It was all smooth 
and faultlessly clean about the door, the short 
grass making a green margin for a sufficient 
drive for vehicles of all sorts, and many at a 
time, to come up composedly before the win- 
dows. Lights were flashing, and cheery wood- 
fires blazing in the great square rooms when 
the laden coach rattled up to the door, just at 
night in late autumn ; and never was sincerer 
welcome extended to weary souls away from 
their own home-hearth, than came playing and 
dancing forth from those flames into their eager 
eyes. The pursy landlord — best evidence of 
his own tavern-fare — bustled in and out of 
the rooms, explaining to one where he could 
be accommodated with "travellers' rest," and 
showing another into the wash-room, — now 
stirring up the fire with a firesh inspiration of 
industry, and now suddenly retreating to an- 
swer a call in the low-studded bar-room. He 
made himself genial to all ; put general ques- 
tions, and made general answers to all par- 
ticular ones ; and gave over no personal effort 
until he saw for himself that every man, woman, 
and child had fallen naturally into place in his 
own family circle, and satisfied his honest judg- 

12 



178 HOMESPUN. 

ment that they were thoroughly comfortable 
and happy. 

He ? — why, bless your heart ! he made it a 
point in his education as an accomplished pub- 
lican, to qualify himself to "talk politics" — 
though not to venture upon discussion — with 
every judge, lawyer, and public character whom 
the coach — which to him stood for the world 
— might please to bring to his door. He would 
have felt illy adapted to his station, had he 
come short in so important a particular. Now- 
adays, the very boys talk politics, with una- 
bashed vociferousness ; and even the women, 
too ; and the wise man is he who shuts tight 
his lips and stays, like a hermit or a turtle, with 
his own wisdom at home. All the ministers, 
the country round, he knew by creed and 
name ; and he would dispense as full and fair 
a judgment on both, in a few shrewdly wise 
phrases, as they could themselves have passed 
on their own doctrines and in their own pul- 
pits. He was the genius loci; and unless his 
familiar and effulgent countenance was seen 
of the traveller as he drove up to share his wel- 
come entertainment, he seemed to have missed 
of the pith of his visit altogether. For food 
and lodging were not quite all the stranger ex- 
pected to find there ; he looked for a share of 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 179 

the landlord's cheery greeting and cordial con- 
versation. 

Between the people of the neighborhood and 
their wonted social recreations he served as a 
sort of connecting link, or substantial hyphen ; 
if anything was going on, or was likely to go 
on, our jolly host could whisper you all there 
was to it, because it had been invariablv con- 
certed at tavern headquarters. More business 
— in the line of pleasure — was here set on 
foot than anywhere else in the town or the 
country round about. The landlord must needs 
be consulted about the next ball, or the select 
cotillon party, or the harvest supper of a circle 
of old-friend farmers, or on matters of that sort. 
Was there a squirrel hunt in the autumn ? 
Never until the arrangements for picking clean 
their little bones at the long table in his dining- 
room had all been gone over with so much care, 
and the whole cost and outlay duly estimated 
at his hands. 

If a drover stopped over night with him, he 
could answer every one of his inquiries for lo- 
cal news while he was twirling the toddy-stick 
in his customer's punch at the bar. Would a 
family party, on an excursion of pleasure across 
the country, " put up " with him till next morn- 
ing ? — he was at the door as quick as they 



180 HOMESPUN. 

were at the step themselves, and made it hard 
for them to believe they had wandered very far 
from their own threshold, after all. The man, 
in fact, was like his inn, — broad, welcoming, 
sunny, domestic, full of light and life, and 
withal as plain as he was sincere. These later 
times seem to demand no such characters in 
their hasty service, and therefore none such are 
to be found. 

The stage-coach driver was a feature of the 
Old Tavern, as distinct as the landlord's self. 
Muffled, in winter, in his huge gray woollen tie, 
and nested in warm robes that defiantly flung 
oif the icy arrows of the season, he was the 
passing envy of half the rosy girls and all the 
little boys the country round. What a rever- 
berating ti-ra-tir-a-la ! he shook out from the 
nozzle of that well-worn horn of his, as he crept 
over the summit of the hill from which he 
could see the roofs and smokes of the Tavern ! 
Countless were the errands entrusted to his 
elastic memory, and his perennial spring of 
good-nature made their prompt discharge worth 
double what they were taxed for in his daily 
reckonings. He was, perforce, in the confi- 
dence of half the girls along the road ; and 
they would have felt sadly slighted if he had 
failed, even for a single time, in the dexterous 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 181 

acknowledgment of their stolen smiles and 
glances. He could tell you, if he so chose, and 
if you were lucky enough to ride on the box 
with him, who was likely to " catch " this one, 
and who not long ago " got the mitten " from, 
that. A very fund, nay, a strong-box of dear 
little secrets was he, and the key was kept hid 
where none but the owners of their property 
could find it for themselves. 

At the Tavern were consummated cattle 
swaps and horse trades uncounted. It served 
for their Exchange ; and never did a dicker or 
a jockey occm*, but the profit and the loss were 
each congratulated and consoled with sundry 
social drinks at the bar. At all hours of the 
day, and through all seasons of the year, a fly, 
a sulky, or a skeleton gig could be seen some- 
where about the yard, the property in horse-flesh 
changing hands so rapidly that one could with 
difiiculty trace it along to its last holder. In 
fact, the capacious stables were pied and mot- 
tled inwardly with all varieties of steeds, from 
the showy and shiny bay to the ewe-necked 
and cat-hammed drudge of the shiftless jock- 
ey ; and their study would have held the eye 
of the naturalist not less than of the fancier. 

The upper hall, of winter evenings, frequently 
blazed with multitudinous taUow lights, and 



182 HOMESPUN. 

resounded to the inspiring strains of violin 
and clarionet. There the good folks enjoyed 
hearty times indeed ; no mincing and tossing 
while the airs of Strauss were played so di- 
vinely, — no loud and rude estimates, such as 
one is compelled to hear now, of the value 
of the very clothes one had on, or of a part- 
ner's necklace, already blooming and bouncing 
enough in modest muslin, — but right-down 
enjoyment all round on the spot, as if that was 
the very thing they came for. And they never 
went home without having it. Nor were the 
other occasions of the year at all cast into the 
shadow by these sundry ball-and-party " good 
times " ; the suppers and private feasts enjoyed 
under that sheltering roof were matters to stick 
by the memory of a man long after their flavors 
were lost to his palate. Thus did the dull days 
shut in as much pleasure there as the sunny 
ones ; it was all sunshine at the Old Tavern, 
and the prime expression of the place was one 
of comfort and warmth and careful attention. 
Of summer evenings, through the lingering 
twilight, a row of respectable idlers — the pro- 
fessional loungers of the town — used to be 
drawn up on the low, long benches set against 
the house, whose heaviest responsibilities as a 
body were to discuss the affairs of town and 



THE COUNTRY TAVERN. 183 

nation, and pass judgment on such vehicles, 
with their contents, as chanced at that dreamy 
hour to come up. This bench was a sort of 
idlers' paradise ; he who sat on it must cer- 
tainly have had his lids touched by the wing 
of somnolency, for thereafter he seemed to have 
no care, and scarcely to entertain a serious 
thought. It was like drifting in one's skiff off 
into the region of sunset. A drowsy knot they 
were, enjoying the noiseless twilight, the shel- 
ter of the great elms, the quiet bustle going on 
in-doors, and the sleepy influences of their own 
low hum of talk. 

But the Old Tavern, alas ! is no more. 

You may travel off among the hills and up 
and down the ancient pikes of New England 
in quest of it, but you don't find it there now. 
The structure may still be standing where it 
did, but it is a comparative solitude now ; no 
life about the yard, — no swarming in and out 
the doors, — no cheerful faces close to the win- 
dows, — nor fires on the hearths, — nor lights 
and music in the halls. Travellers go not now 
by that way ; but skim the ground a dozen 
miles to the east or w^est of it, little thinking 
of the substantial pleasure their fathers and 
mothers enjoyed in that now neglected place, 
when to travel was to trundle over the roads at 



184 



HOMESPUN. 



the rate of forty railes a day, instead of the 
hour, and stop at all the excellent taverns that 
once formed a chain of. posts from southern 
New England to the farthest lines of the Can- 
adas in the wilderness. 





THE COTJNTBT MU8TEB. 

/JRMA. virumque cano^ — or, at least, a whole 
Regiment and its Colonel. 

Rub-a-dub ! rub-a-dub ! — The memory is 
quickened with scouting thoughts of Caesar, 
of Marlborough, and of Israel Putnam. One 
tries in a moment to think of all the great 
sieges in history, from that of old Troy down 
to the later one of Vicksburg ; of battles, and 
skirmishes, and victories, and retreats ; of be- 
leaguered Antwerps, and Netherland Revolts, 
and Peninsular Wars ; of grimy cannoniers, 
and clashing sabres, and rattling spurs. And 
still it can be heard a full half-mile off, far 
away over the green-sward plain, — Rub-a- 
dub ! rub-a-dub ! rub-a-dub ! 

The little fellows, on the way to training in 
company with their fathers, can scarcely touch 
their heels to the ground. Every breath of 
wind that wafts to their ears a faint roll of the 
martial music, stirs their impatience to put be- 
hind them all the rods that lie between their 



186 HOMESPUN. 

feet and the camp-ground. As they come still 
nearer, and see the rows of dingy booths that 
serve for tricky margins to the martial show, 
with fiddles squealing, and dancing going for- 
ward, — oysters, hot coffee, gingerbread, and 
pies cried in their ears, — pedlers hawking 
their cheap wares from the tops of wagons, 
men and boys straggling about among the 
carts, some singing drunken songs that overrun 
with drowsy riot, some mimicking the tones of 
the noisy auctioneers, the women mingled in 
with the men all along in front of the military 
lines, — they feel, at length, as if the summit 
of their year's hopes had been reached, and 
every heart-beat responds to the tattoo of the 
inspiring drumstick at the head of the regi- 
ment. 

The great " campus martius " presents the 
usual motley of so fantastic a festival. There 
is nothing in all history before it, from the hust- 
ling times of the Crusades to the scientific 
defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Frederick 
of Prussia never plumed himself more on his 
famous grenadiers than does the regimental 
Colonel on the all-sizes under his command, — 
" Decus et tutamen in armisP There he is in 
the saddle now I How proudly that best piece 
of horse-flesh in the county takes his martial 



THE COUNTRY MUSTER. 187 

paces across the turf he spurns ! How gayly 
glitter the epaulettes of his rider — how grace- 
fully waves his plume — how noisily jingle his 
regimental trappings ! He must assuredly feel 
as if the neck of his steed was " clothed with 
thunder." Achilles did not rush more eagerly 
into the Trojan meled to avenge his well- 
beloved Patroclus, than does our gallant 
Colonel dash up to his noble column, that 
he may prance his horse showily down the 
lines as far as to his valiant ensigns. — O 
War ! War ! little knowest thou of the blood- 
less farces that have been annually performed 
in old pastures and quiet back-lots in thy 
name ! We need a Cervantes, to show up as 
it should be done the pleasanter side of thee ! 

The wagons from all the quiet farm- 
houses for miles around are collecting as fast 
as they can, and the horses taken out and 
baited with the bundles of hay from behind 
the seat ; all about the grounds is an encamp- 
ment of farmers' turn-outs, the owners having 
sprinkled themselves over the martial plain. 
The neighing of old mares — hinnitus equa- 
rum, as Virgil might say, — makes one think 
of the vast preparations of old time for expedi- 
tions against the Infidels, when all the para- 
phernalia of war were mixed up in distracting 



188 HOMESPUN. 

confusion, — booths and heroes and armor and 
smiths. All comers are " tidied up " in their 
best suits, and not a boy — unless of the fight- 
ing class who go to such places — but wears 
as smooth and clean a collar as his good 
mother at home could fold and pin about his 
tawny neck. Ah ! but this is peculiarly the 
boys' own day ; this is the great harvest time 
for huge sheets of gingerbread, small beer, and 
Sicily oranges. If they have been hoarding 
up the proceeds of woodchuck skins, and the 
margins accruing from sharp-sighted traffic in 
small miscellanies, for months past, it was but 
to this most worthy end ; they kept their im- 
aginations at white heat by dwelling on the 
sweetened luxuries of the coming Muster. 

The regiment — as any military man will 
tell you — is broken into companies ; you can 
see the several captains, short and tall, stand- 
ing forth all the way down the line, fixed and 
rigid under the load of their holiday responsi- 
bilities. Somewhere among them stand our 
Scotts and Taylors that are to be, and the 
whole corps of our Worths and Wools and Mc- 
Clellans. They know it, and the county round 
about knows it ; and peace is therefore secure. 
But the pied uniforms impart a mosaic appear- 
ance to the field, that could not otherwise be 



THE COUNTRY MUSTER. 189 

so skilfully produced by any device of mortal 
man. Some of the companies are clad in 
true-blue from top to toe, buttoned up all tight 
and right; while their neighbors wear black 
swallow-tails over ample seats of white, whose 
natural extensions flap their folds in the wind 
all the way down their legs. Artillery-men 
carry on their heads great, heavy, bell-shaped 
hats of leather, surmounted with a yellow stub 
of a pompion ; and over each man's two 
shoulders creep a pair of yellow woollen cater- 
pillars, possibly denoting that " in hoc signo " 
they are bound to fire as good guns, and as 
loud, as the best of them. Every captain 
wears a monster chapeau, that unfortunately 
half swamps the eyes of the little fellows, and 
diminishes to that extent their native expres- 
sion ; while a red sash either encircles the 
waist of the slim ones, or makes an indented 
equatorial line around the abdomen of the cor- 
pulent. When the proper field ofiicer, stiffen- 
ing his legs in the stirrups, orders them to 
" march," such a lifting of long legs and such 
a stretching of short ones, for some three or 
four paces forward, is not to be seen and en- 
joyed among the grenadiers of old Europe, or 
the chasseurs of modern Africa either. Then 
they face about again, and march back to their 



190 HOMESPUN. 

lines with all the satisfaction of commanders 
just returned from victorious war. The cap- 
tains are the " representative men " of their 
companies ; " ex uno disce 07nnesy 

In all these rural regiments there are two ele- 
ments, — the volunteers and the militia. The 
latter used to be honored with the patriotic 
title of " m\-lishP It was the glory and 
boast of these " regulars " that they trained 
but twice a year, paid their fines when they 
preferred to do that, and uniformed themselves 
after rules and patterns the most discordant 
and diverse. Some with light trousers, and 
some with dark ; now and then one in his 
shirt sleeves — his family coat of arms ; and, 
here and there, one in a very wide-brim straw 
hat. All styles of toggery, — hats, caps, and 
straws ; jackets, swallow-tails, and frocks ; six- 
footers and lilliputians ; men with the lean and 
hungry look of Cassius, and men with the 
proportions of our ancient friend FalstafF; 
hirsute and shaven ; shouldering rusty fowling- 
pieces and little stumpy rifles ; brandishing 
bayonets and drilling with hickory-sticks; — 
all a medley of men, arms, and clothing, that 
would have divided public admiration with the 
ill-assorted heroes of Coventry. 

Such the field. A loosely linked chain 



THE COUNTRY MUSTER. 191 

of versi-colored parts, stretched like a huge 
serpent along the ground. At the head, a 
corps of drunnmers and fifers, commanded by 
a musically-given major, who cuts off their 
tunes with a professional twinkle of his sword- 
blade. When the drums begin their roll, after 
the routine of regimental drill is over, the vast 
encampment wakes up from centre to circum- 
ference. All the boys make a rush for the 
music, and all the sentries straddle across the 
enclosure at the top speed of a walk, to head 
them off or die in the attempt. The girls and 
the mothers testify their martial spirit by a 
new flash of the eye and flush of the cheek, 
and involuntarily keep time with the beat of 
the drum-sticks. The staid family beasts 
standing round prick up their ears, many of 
them recognizing the very same music that 
was drummed out in that very same place, 
years ago, in their coltish youthfulness. The 
din around the refreshment booths is for a few 
moments hushed, and the laughter of the sons 
of Ham temporarily gives way to the only en- 
joyment which can claim successful competi- 
tion. 

Now they form in sections, some of the 
ranks so crooked that no military genius could 
ever hope to make them stand still. The 



192 HOMESPUN. 

Colonel is at the head of the column, with 
sword poised over his shoulder ; and his staff 
take subordinate positions, according to the 
rigid fornfis of military law. " Forward — 
march ! " How the order rings far down over 
the heads of the phalanx in arms! It is 
caught up by all the big captains and the 
little captains, and whole lines of legs are 
simultaneously stretched to measure a two- 
foot pace, according to the local manual. 
The fifes set up their scream. The snare 
drums roll long waves of music down the 
column. The bass drums come thumping 
in with their swelling musical emphasis. And 
away they start on a proud expedition across 
the rolling plain. The heart of the com- 
mander swells and bumps under his padded 
coat, and he puts his horse through a process 
of showy caracoling that both displays his own 
figure and delights an assembly already pre- 
disposed to admiration. How many a blush- 
ing girl at the rail-fence secretly wishes she 
could see her chosen one display himself to 
the multitude after a fashion like that ! How 
many a hard-working mother, fresh from the 
butter-tray and the cheese-press, thinks that her 
son on that horse would surely look " the 
foremost man of all the world " ! The crowds 



THE COUNTRY MUSTER. 193 

collect all along the lines, as they pass, in- 
spired by the music that comes on with its 
rolling and screaming crescendo. 

Nothing could be grander, either, in a small, 
human way, than the sight of those brilliant 
uniforms a-straddle of those richly caparisoned 
horses ! I do not believe the armorers of the 
Middle-Ages ever set their iron dinner-pots on 
the skulls of Knights-errant one half so royally 
as our Colonel and his suite wear their heavy 
chapeaus of plush and plume ; or that glaives 
and gauntlets of the days of romance and 
general tomfoolery ever surpassed those bright 
yellow buckskins that come half the way down 
the military arm. And the gilt bars across the 
breast, like a Venetian blind I the gilded epau- 
lettes, with their trembling tendrils, on each 
shoulder! and the flowing sash, flowing plume, 
and flowing mane and tail of the horse of the 
commander ! 

To describe the " sham-fight " with which 
the day's exercises wind up, would require a 
pen like Homer's, (if he ever used such a thing,) 
so many are the heroes with portraits to be 
painted, and so stirring is the encounter be- 
tween artillery and stump rifles and hickory 
sticks. The plain soon becomes a bank of 
smoke-clouds, which nothing but the return of 

13 



194 HOMESPUN. 

welcome peace and sunrise can dissipate. Out 
of this blank-cartridge engagement the officers 
always manage to escape without wounds, and 
are found sitting on horses as sound of wind 
and as strongly inclined to repose as ever. 
The surgeon pays no sort of attention to Ms 
duties on the field; from which fact the af- 
frighted females infer that none are wounded, 
let the dead number what they will. 

Finally, the whole regiment is skilfully 
drawn up in the form of a hollow square, 
shutting in its officers with the chaplain much 
as cows areyarded in the country; and, when 
all is still, the " God of battles " is solemnly 
invoked on behalf of this yearly muster of in- 
offensive armed men ; and then the closed wings 
unfold to let the cooped leaders out again. 

The regiment is somehow got back, by haw- 
ing and geeing, into line, — the drums are 
briskly beaten a little w^hile longer, — the Colo- 
nel takes another ride up and down the length 
of the rather serpentine column, — and, at last, 
from his seat ia the saddle, the order is given 
to dismiss, and the companies march off each 
to its own rendezvous, firing a mild salute at 
the approaching sunset. And men and boys, 
women and girls, white, black, and yellow, re- 
luctantly prepare to go home, and to bed as 
quick as they can get there. 



THE COUNTRY MUSTER. 



195 



This 



IS 



the annual " training " of thirty 
years ago. We have passed through serious 
experiences since, in which the raw troops of 
the country pastures have nobly vindicated the 
fame of their Revolutionary ancestry before the 
country and the world. 





THE COUNTY FAIB. 



A MILD, hazy, dreamy day in early Octo- 
ber. The place — the shh-e-town of the 
County, where the Courts are held. The hour 
— a very early one in the morning. 

Cattle have been coming in, in droves, for 
some time, hurried forward by men in wagons 
and boys on foot who are dressed for the stir- 
ring events of the day. The tavern-doors are 
opened, and the landlords are out in their shirt- 
sleeves, sweeping the steps and the ground just 
before the windows. People are slowly and 
one by one awaking to the dawn and its new 
demands, up and down the village street. Se- 
lect herds of stock straggle along through the 
town, from time to time, and file off to the 
grounds just behind, where they go into such 
quarters as may have been designated by the 
proper committees. 

Presently a wagon, or two, rolls leisurely 
along, bringing a load of handsome poultry in 
its capacious body, — coops of geese, ducks, 



THE COUNTY FAIR. 197 

and hens of every known blood, breed, and 
variety. A colt comes whinnying at the foot 
of her dam, both of them to add to the day's 
attractions in the list of live-stock. 

There is a sweet rural fragrance everywhere. 
You can even smell new-mown hay, in imagi- 
nation, with the sight of the strings of jogging 
oxen and the sound of the herds of lowing cows. 
The sun comes over the street, at last, and the 
whole town — grass, trees, and houses — is 
steeped in the yellow glory of an autumnal, 
morning. 

By eight o'clock the crowds begin to gather 
everywhere. First, they group in little knots 
on the corners, and along down the sides of the 
street ; and afterwards they get mixed up in a 
homogeneous mass. The chief centre of all 
attraction in the village is the town-house, 
where are to be seen the various articles of 
female ingenuity and industry, and all the un- 
told products of flower and kitchen gardens ; 
likewise, tempting specimens of bakery, of 
butter and cheese, and of all those other creat- 
ure comforts that impart such a rich creami- 
ness to the life of the generous farmer. 

The one other point of attraction, to divide 
the honors of the day with the attention of the 
thousand spectators, is the " Show- Grounds." 



198 HOMESPUN. 

To the real lover of rural sights and sounds, 
with an imagination to be inflamed and a sym- 
pathy to be excited by such things, this is the 
very place to which his feet turn at an early 
hour in the morning. 

Pens are constructed of rough boards, rang- 
ing over an area of several acres. Tickets are 
tacked upon them, inscribed with the names 
of those who own the contents. You begin 
at the head of the row with some fine calves, 
^blating in your face and eyes as if they mistook 
you for a relative long absent. Next comes a 
pen of handsome red cows ; then brindle ; then 
clear red-and-white, grade cows, that are hand- 
some enough to be of full blood ; then bulls ; 
then more cows ; more calves ; cows — cows 
— cows again, one, two, and three in a pen ; 
pretty heifers, as pretty as ever graced a new 
name or a new cedar milk-pail ; then sheep, — 
Leicester, Cots wolds. Southdown, and Merino, 
in various strains of crossing. 

The sheep huddle timidly into the further 
corners of their pens, and look out through the 
crevices as if they wanted to ask the Commit- 
tee when this tiresome pen-performance would 
be over. Their white and downy wool catches 
the eye for a long row of piney divisions ; and 
then succeeds the department of swine. Our 



THE COUNTY FAIR. 199 

farmer friends believe in pork, even as, at the 
South, they return ever to their bacon. With 
a fair proportion of pork, cabbage, potatoes, 
and beans, they would get through the hardest 
winter, or the longest year, with almost the lux- 
urious content of an early Roman Emperor ; 
even old Heliogabalus could not have prided 
himself more loftily on his turbot and peacock 
sauce. The Hog used to be the guardian spirit 
of the New England farm, — so it might have 
been contended ; for the population certainly 
worshipped him in all forms and on all occa- 
sions. The farmer could scarcely seat himself 
at his table without finding his old swine-friend 
there before him. We have changed that a 
little now, but not altogether ; as the principles 
of physiology are more widely spread and be- 
come better understood, we may hope, all of 
us, to " return to our muttons." 

But Piggy stands up and lies down in these 
pens at the Show, knee-deep in nice, clean 
straw, studying human nature by the help of 
that inquisitive little eye as it throngs past, and 
sometimes seeming perplexed — and with rea- 
son — to settle it whether himself or those who 
stir him up so unceasingly may be charged 
with the more genuine hoggish ness. Strange 
as it is, everybody looks over the pens at the 



200 HOMESPUN. 

swine ; and all the little boys of the country- 
peep through the cracks at the white runts of 
pigs trying to hide in the straw, and squeak at 
them in mean and mimicking derision. 

There is a ploughing-match on an open plain 
hard by, which the sturdy young farmers attend 
in numbers ; for it is the plough that ushered 
in all the triumphs and rewards of the modern 
systems of agriculture. Fine yokes of oxen, 
clear red, descendants of the elegant creatures 
that hail from old Devonshire, stand about on 
the outer limits, and the Committee are exam- 
ining their good points with due care and close- 
ness. Then the few horses that are brought 
here are held all the while by grooms, and men 
pass along from one to the other, " talking 
horse " with more or less confidence, according 
to their tastes. The neighing and whinnying 
increases the confusion of sounds, and, mingled 
with the lowing of cattle and the bleating of 
sheep, brings out the spirit of rusticity to the 
utmost ; one can realize, on the spot, the pret- 
tiest rural picture ever sketched in English 
poetry. 

There is general bustle, very soon ; the sev- 
eral Committees, with ribbons flying from their 
button-holes, are moving briskly from pen to 
pen, paper and pencil in hand, getting ready 



THE COUNTY FAIR. 201 

their reports and awards. The farmers have 
now brought their good wives and buxom 
daughters upon the ground, and they are rang- 
ing up and down the rows of enclosures and 
scanning with genuine interest every specimen 
of stock they contain. Do you suppose a 
bright country girl has not as quick an eye for 
a promising heifer, or a motherly milker, as she 
has for the sprucest young fellow who throws 
" sheep's-eyes " at her in meeting, and then 
comes to " sit up " with her of a Sunday even- 
ing ? — or that, like the superb Europa herself, 
she may not regard the points of a noble bull 
with swelling admiration, and wish that a 
strain of that high blood were infused into the 
herd of milkers in her own father's yard ? Our 
fair English ladies are at home just there ; it 
was left for latter-day Yankees to touch a point 
of fastidiousness that lies a good way out of 
the reach of refinement itself. 

The court-house, up-stairs and down, is 
crammed with the details of this annual dis- 
play. Here centre mainly the industry and 
interests of the domestic department. Here 
you can stroll about at your leisure, jostled, of 
course, and jammed as you go, and inspect the 
handiwork of the wives and the daughters. It 
is spread out over tables and benches, arranged 



202 HOMESPUN. 

under glass coverings, hung against the walls, 
piled upon shelves, and suspended from the 
ceiling. It beautifies and enriches the whole 
place. If the show-grounds offer the attrac- 
tions of profits to the eye of the observer, the 
hall and other rooms crowd the brain with sug- 
gestions of comfort, and plenty, and domestic 
luxury. All devices possible to execute in em- 
broidery attract and delight the sight. Won- 
ders of industrious ingenuity in the bed-quilt 
line hang, like choicest domestic tapestry, about 
the different rooms. Socks and stockings, soft 
enough to have been woven from the Golden 
Fleece, are displayed at several points of at- 
traction ; and mittens, though not of the sort 
sometimes given by the girls, are on exhibition 
along with them. Butter and cheese, too, in the 
dairy department, arranged around so tempt- 
ingly as that one can scarcely help slicing the 
neighboring loaves and spreading them thick., 
on the spot. 

Soon after noon, when the appetites of the 
thousand or more comers have had a chance to 
get their edge a little taken off, the meeting- 
house — or church — begins to fill up with an 
expectant assembly. The influential ladies of 
the town are observed to show the way to the 
rest, and presently the people begin to flock in. 



THE COUNTY FAIR. 203 

For Esquire Somebody, one of the greatest 
lawyers (not farmers) of the county, is going to 
address the committees and assembled citizens, 
on the topic which seems to engross the atten- 
tion of all, that day. The house once fairly 
full, the orator, in personal charge of still 
another Committee, traverses the central aisle 
and climbs the stairs to the pulpit-box, whence 
he very soon proceeds to fulminate the thun- 
ders of his knowledge, and to flash the light-' 
nings of his wit — a little rusty — upon the 
approving auditory below. Possibly, in imag- 
ination, he tries to realize what it would cost 
him, in vital resources, to exchange his .own 
profession for that of the gentleman whose 
place this regularly is. At all events, he gives 
them a good Address, in the course of which 
ploughs and furrows, rhetoric and assertion, 
flattery and flummery, — considered only from 
the agricultural point, of course, — are adroitly 
mixed up. No matter, however, if " the la- 
dies " are well pleased ; and though he may 
know no more of agriculture practically than 
is contained in the term " boundary fence," 
yet if he do but praise the butter and cheese 
over at the hall, and talk beautifully on the in- 
fluence of woman, with a little something about 
" fair hands " and " own vine and fig-tree," the 



204 HOMESPUN. 

harangue is esteemed a success, and the dig- 
nity of Agriculture is once more happily vindi- 
cated. 

After this discourse, the reports of the vari- 
ous Committees are heard ; and then it is, the 
heart of many a young farmer swells with de- 
served pride, to have it proclaimed to all the 
country round that he can beat the best of them 
at raising stock, or fattening swine, or guiding 
the plough across an even piece of greensward. 
Or the matrons grow a little red in the face, at 
hearing — exactly as they wished to — that 
their particular lot of butter and cheese bears 
off the year's palm ; or the girls vainly try to 
hide their heads, to learn, in the presence of 
that congregation, that they have earned public 
praise and corresponding prizes for making 
bread that is as light as a sponge, knitted the 
evenest and softest stockings, and patched the 
prettiest bed-quilts. A vast deal of whispering 
and tittering may be heard over the church 
while this department of the prize-reading goes 
on ; and, as for the disappointed ones, leave 
them alone to find good reasons enough, and 
plenty of them, for their defeat in this contest, 
which, happily, renders them none the less ea- 
ger for another year's trial. 

The usual resolutions are read and passed \ 



THE COUNTY FAIR. 205 

new committees are appointed for directing 
the next year's proceedings ; and the assem- 
blage disperses amid a hum of talk and general 
good humor. And then, one by one, parties 
begin to make up for home. It may be that 
they have come ten, twenty, or even more miles 
to this festival; they ride off gayly, satisfied 
with the pleasures and profits of the day, eon- 
tent if they reach their homes in the damp cool- 
ness of a lovely autumn evening. 

The remainder of the afternoon is devoted 
to the sale of such cattle and other stock as 
their owners are willing to dispose of, and to 
the gathering up of property previous to get- 
ting it back to the farms on which it belongs. 
The scenes on the show-grounds are then ex- 
tremely interesting. More of the real farmer 
feeling breaks out, as if all were met at an in- 
formal meeting ; and the swapping and jockey- 
ing make the occasion as lively as any of the 
Fair Days in the rural districts of Old Eng- 
land. Not until long after the usual hour at 
night is the town street still again, parties being 
given at the dwellings of some of the leading 
citizens, and the taverns unable to be quiet, 
with their company, till every item of the day's 
doings has been thoroughly discussed. 



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THE COUJSfTBT MINI8TEB, 

THEY have none of the fine clergymen to 
be found in novels, among the hard hills 
of New England. Such poetry as has been 
thrown around the calling in other countries 
does not belong to it there. It is, instead, the 
most actual and outright prose possible. 

Times have changed about very strangely 
since the days of our fathers, — that we know ; 
and, along with the times, the relations be- 
tween pastor and people also. A genial and fa- 
cetious clergyman of Massachusetts remarked, 
in the course of a telling speech at a horse- 
show, that the horse was a truly noble animal, 
and a nice piece of property for a minister ; for 
he verily believed the time was close at hand 
when it would be necessary for ministers to 
settle on horseback ! 

The old-fashion, old-school, patriarchal, pos- 
itive, dogmatic, yet benevolent ministers who 
used to maintain their fixed positions from one 
end of the land to the other, are nearly all 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 207 

passed away ; and none come forward to sup- 
ply their places, simply because the condition 
of society requires a new order of men. These 
were stern men and godly ; puritan and primi- 
tive ; ascetic in their habits and forbidding in 
their mien, yet as playful as kittens at heart, 
praying to God morning and evening that they 
might be kept innocent of all guile. They 
were established, with their families, on broad 
and fertile acres, — and still, the acres were as 
likely to prove sterile as fertile. They dom- 
iciled in huge rectangular houses, with low 
ceilings and rambling rooms ; sat at boards 
laden with substantial cheer, and garnished 
with goodly rows of children ; and kept their 
horse apiece, and their cow or two, and their 
oxen sometimes, — a yoke or so, — with whose 
patient help they ploughed their stubborn glebe 
in the springs. 

Theirs was a day and generation by itself. 
They were the Popes of their isolated parishes, 
— the Clements and Hildebrands of all the 
country round. Beside the doctor and the 
lawyer of the place, no one knew so much as 
" our minister." Indeed, not even they were at 
all times admitted to an equality in the popu- 
lar esteem with himself. The little girls and 
boys were taught to fear his frown, and to feel 



208 HOMESPUN. 

eternally grateful for so much as a ray of his 
benignant, but strictly conscientious, smile. 
When he walked down the road with that sol- 
emn tread, the females would hurry to the front 
windows and summon all" within their hearing 
to come and see the minister go by. They 
seemed to believe the very atmosphere around 
him was a sort of *' glory." Even the earth on 
which he left the print of his substantial soles 
they esteemed half sacred by reason of his 
tread. What he divided of the Word among 
them on the Sabbaths, they accepted with 
thanks and without the thought of venturing a 
question. His Scripture commentaries were 
received as final, and quite beyond the disturb- 
ance of human criticism. His definition of the 
doctrines he so stoutly enforced was the begin- 
ning and end of true theology, — the Alpha 
and Omega of biblical truth. 

Outside of the old Romish Church herself, it 
would be difficult to find an individual in any 
age, who so perfectly personated, by his influ- 
ence and force of character, the almost unlim- 
ited power of its priests. It was genuine The- 
ocracy. While eschewing and combatting, and 
denouncing and defying that Church, with all 
the rigor, and aroused energy, and passion of 
his rugged nature, he at the same time, and in 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 209 

his own way, illustrated most strangely the 
powers and peculiarities against which he was 
so fervently praying and contending. 

Such were the ministers of the Old time. 
They had the spirit oi fight in them, and plenty 
of it. They were bred up to make a show of 
pluck, as well in the pulpit as out ; and could 
flourish a sword, or handle a musket, or lead a 
forlorn hope, — some of them, — as well as 
many more who cut such figures on the page 
of history. They took their stand, whether on 
religion or politics, and vigorously defended it. 
Not a foot was yielded to the assaulting en- 
emy, whether human or satanic; they would 
sooner throw inkstands in return, as did un- 
yielding Luther. The last thing they would 
do was give quarter; that was a favor they 
neither asked nor accepted for themselves, but 
fought until fighting was of no further use, one 
party only being left for future operations. In 
such habits of mind, it is true that the gentler 
and more Christlike qualities of the Soul were 
not always called out ; but the work to be done 
— rough pioneer work as it was — was not of 
the sort for sentimentalists to take in hand, or 
for lily-white rhapsodists and rhetoricians, with 
smoothly ironed bands beneath their chins. 
These brave and sturdy old ministers, with 

14 



210 HOMESPUN. 

their hearts of oak, had rough work before 
them ; and they did it thoroughly and well. 

But a race like that passed away with the 
times that demanded its services. A new race 
trode in its footsteps, inheriting all its vigorous 
and independent qualities of character, fully as 
dogmatic in its opinions and as deeply rooted 
in its prejudices, yet with a degree of flexible 
adaptiveness, yielding to the changing temper 
and custom of the times, though claiming just 
the same show of veneration from its entire 
parishes, and seeking to impose the same ser- 
vile fear on all the little boys and girls that 
came in its way. 

And still another, and another class has fol- 
lowed ; in some respects mellowing, and, as it 
were, humanizing with each advance, but in 
its main qualities of character copying with a 
rigid spirit of veneration the very traits, speech, 
and manners of those ancient and time-hon- 
ored men, whose names are engraven more en- 
duringly than in brass. 

The modern New England minister is hardly 
the minister, or the man, of the Old School. 
While he lacks — and knows it — the vigorous 
energy of the latter, and is wanting in that 
fearless independence which never quailed in 
an emergency, he nevertheless seeks to com- 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 211 

pensate for the loss by mechanical conformity 
with a few antiquated manners and customs, 
— such as pertain to the cutting of his hair, 
the hue and tie of his cravat, the shape of his 
boots, the solemn deep-soundings of his voice, 
and perhaps the rigid style of his family living. 
Many a man will keep the form, though the 
life went out of it long ago. To him who can 
penetrate beneath the surface, forms have al- 
most ceased to offer any meaning. 

But all country ministers are not to be 

set down in these matters upon the same foot- 
ing. There are differences, according to loca- 
tion. At the West, customs go for less than 
almost anywhere else ; but in the Eastern 
States, and in New England especially, they 
must be studied in connection with the people 
and the prosperity around them. There are 
" Sunnysides " and " Shadysides " everywhere 
among the valleys of New England ; and 
within the walls of country parsonages — 
where, indeed, they have any parsonages at all 

— stories are yet to be written, — tragedies, 
some of them, — that will hold the attention 
of the most thoughtless skater over the surface 
of print. 

Nowadays, they go to their parishes young, 

— that is, as soon as they obtain their licenses 



212 HOMESPUN. 

at the Schools, or whenever they have taken to 
themselves blooming and blessing wives as 
companions on the journey. They first preach 
a few times in a place, are perhaps liked, learn 
how much was paid the last minister, and close 
the bargain and settle down. From that day 
forward, themselves and their youthful wives 
become public property ; their finest sensibili- 
ties are a sort of highway for inconsiderate 
tongues to walk and wag over. They give a 
good day's study to the quarters which the par- 
ish has provided for them, get acquainted with 
the deacons, find their way as fast as they can 
over their extended parish, hurry together their 
several articles of household economy, and at 
last report of themselves, and try actually to 
feel, that they are settled. 

For a time, how lonely ! If father and 
mother could but drop in, some pleasant after- 
noon, and take an early tea with them, — how 
much sooner those strange rooms, with their 
stranger echoes, would seem cheerful ! All 
faces are new to them. They cannot yet tell 
who come from pure friendliness, and who just 
to see their " new things." Between a state 
of half sadness and one of joy, their hearts are 
for a time divided, and light and shadow long 
alternate across their path. 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 213 

Every country minister has peculiar experi- 
ences ; the country is not so monotonous in 
this respect as many persons would infer. Va- 
rious in various localities, they are essentially 
alike, too, or at least essentially related. The 
deacons in one town are not likely to be al- 
ways the same with the deacons in the town 
adjoining. The social temper here is not ne- 
cessarily the same with the social temper there. 
In one place, the people are perhaps a little 
inclined to social gayety, or what would be 
esteemed such outside their own bailiwick ; in 
the very next town to it, the public face may 
be drawn down to a longitude which only 
skilful navigators can take the measure of. 

Generally, the minister keeps a horse ; some- 
times a cow ; but always a handful of hens. 
He must have something to pet. He and his 
wife take infinite delight with their poultry, 
and so do the little ones, especially at the time 
of the Spring hatchings. The cow proves her- 
self a blessed creature for the little folks, and, 
in fact, more than half keeps the family. And 
they are all so fond of patient " mooley," too, 
and love to see the white streams of her milk 
churning into the pail at night, standing and 
patting her sides while she solemnly chews her 
cud and contemplates the advantages of being 
the minister'* s cow ! 



214 HOMESPUN, 

A horse is hardly so common a piece of 
property among country ministers, though all 
of them would like well enough to own one. 
He costs more money than the cow, in the first 
place ; and unless some man of means hap- 
pens to be kind enough, or the minister him- 
self has married well enough, or by hook and 
by crook laid aside enough, after teaching 
school and purchasing his library with the pro- 
ceeds, to buy such an animal outright, — his 
stall in the barn is crammed with dried corn- 
stalks in winter, and contains an old wheel- 
barrow and a rusty stove or two in summer. 

Some parishes — we could put our finger on 
one such, at this moment — would much pre- 
fer not to have their minister own a horse ; it 
gives him too wide a margin for operating in- 
depently of them. He can thus reach the cars 
too readily to satisfy some who would like to 
domineer over even his means of locomotion. 
His poor wife can take a much-needed airing 
across the country with too little trouble. He 
will himself be apt to spend too liberally of his 
time on the road, at Ihe harness-maker's, in the 
cheery blacksmith's shop, and calling around 
on brother ministers in neighboring parishes. 
To whom, if not to his own people, does his 
time belong ? Has not each and every one of 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 215 

them an interest as abiding in his hours and 
days as in the meeting-house itself, or the red 
school-house at the fork of the road ? In their 
unrelenting estimate, is he not as accountable 
to them for the way he spends his time as they 
are, in other public directions, for the way they 
spend theirs ? 

To write two long sermons each week is 
double what any man of intellectual gifts and 
genuine spiritual attainments ought ever to 
think of attempting. Lectures for an evening 
each week he generally appoints, too ; and he 
is expected to lend his presence and influence 
at all the bees, sociables, and society meetings 
that,xluring the winter at least, divide the week 
into two unmistakable halves. If a single 
family in the wide-spread parish chances to be 
even once overlooked in the annual visit of the 
minister, he is very sure to hear of it in a strain 
of emphasis not soon forgotten. The people 
of his parish are not so delicately organized in 
the region of their sensibilities, or so forbearing 
in the use of their mother tongue, as to keep 
back anything of that sort from him. If he 
errs, they make a point to let him know it ; he 
is not to think he was invited among them to 
point out their errors ; the digito monstrari lies 
altogether on their side. 



216 HOMESPUN. 

Little enough time, therefore, all things con- 
sidered, do country ministers have left in which 
to cultivate a taste for books and general liter- 
ature. In a good many up-country parishes, it 
is esteemed rather effeminate to pay much at- 
tention to letters, and discourses that are guilty 
of the least literary finish are held to be emas- 
culate and ineffective. The people not only 
want the Word, but they want it as hard and 
dry as a navy biscuit. Neither the deacons 
nor the old women believe in mental culture ; 
they ask for the raw staple of brains, without 
any fine spinning to it. To confess a love for 
the poets, those masters of melody and divine 
philosophy, is to betray a weakness not apt to 
be overlooked in estimating the soundness of a 
sermon. There are parishes, and not all of 
them so remote, either, in which if a minister 
were to be known to offer a quotation from a 
favorite author, even giving credit as he pro- 
ceeds, a woe would rest heavily on his local 
reputation forever after. His discourses would 
never again be entirely his own ; he would be 
charged with borrowing even his language ; 
and the deacons would set him down as but a 
copy of something, or somebody, he had been 
indiscreet enough to tell them about, — either 
a book, or an author, they cannot clearly com- 
prehend. 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 217 

In the family of the country minister, 

however, may often be found — especially if 
his life have the flavor of the ancient times in 
it — some of that sweetest contentment which 
comprises about all there is of earthly happi- 
ness, and which never fails to attract the ad- 
miring envy of all who behold it. A genuinely 
happy family is not so common a sight in these 
latter days as that people do not stop to study 
the, phenomenon. Around the cheerful family 
table sit the sons and daughters, coming for- 
ward to be ornaments in society, and chief or- 
naments already in the harmonious household. 
Love sits at the bottom and the top, and Love 
runs all the way through. How dutiful — how 
affectionate — how obedient ! We can here 
realize the happy figure of the " sitting beneath 
one's own vine and fig-tree," and lovely indeed 
is the vision to eyes unaccustomed to behold- 
ing it. 

Perhaps the city clergyman does know more, 
because he sees more, of human nature, and 
of the human heart under varied and strangely 
contrasting circumstances, — but the country 
minister is drawn nearest to Nature, the com- 
mon mother. If he is not so intellectual as his 
city brother, he is more spiritual. He medi- 
tates his discourses in the pleasant fields, and 



218 HOMESPUN. 

out upon the farm-lands which stretch broad 
and far their limits. The fresh airs of the 
woods and ferny pastures should drift through 
his sermons, and make them fragrant and re- 
viving to all who hear them spoken. And the 
closeness of the pastoral relation in sickness, 
in death, in baptism, in the office of marriage, 
is something not so well known to his brethren 
in the cities, who lay their hands upon the 
throbbing hearts of their people but seldom. 
All the associations of country life are calcu- 
lated to make the offices and experiences of 
ministers settled in rural parishes distinct from 
the corresponding offices of their brethren of 
the large towns. The unhappy poet of Olney 
meant volumes more than he could have read 
himself, when he cast the well-known phrase, — 
" God made the country, but Man made the 
town." 

The country minister, like the country school- 
master — his congener, is of necessity a trifle 
less pliant in his manners than his municipal 
brother ; and one reason for it is, there is so 
much more looking than doings so much more 
criticism than beings all around him. The ar- 
gus eyes that watch him from Sunday to Sun- 
day, and the voluble and well-trained tongues 
that take verbal measure, with such fearful ae- 



THE COUNTRY MINISTER. 219 

curacy, of whatever he says and does, — like 
rows of batteries ever ready to belch their fires 
upon him, — compel a sort of constraint in 
spite of himself. Hence his stilted ways, and 
overshot style of expression ; he is aware of it, 
and secretly laments it, — but his fate is upon 
him and he can do nothing. He rarely un- 
bends, or " lets himself out," for there is never 
an occasion for him to do it, and nobody with 
whom he may. Unconsciously to himself he 
has the behavior of a person beset with spies, 
— though possibly harmless ones, — and feels 
that all his phrases are translated w^th as much 
literalness, and into as true polyglot, as those 
of Holy Writ itself. The female portion of 
the parish are inquisitive, in spite of their efforts 
to seem otherwise ; and they cannot propose 
to perform kind and gentle offices for the min- 
ister's family, without betraying the instinct 
that refuses to be concealed. They have so 
grown into the habit of taking toll as they go 
along. 

Reviewing the whole ground, therefore, 

it would be hard to say that the condition of 
the minister settled in the country is just the 
pleasantest which might be imagined by a 
young licentiate. Of really tough and tus- 
socky obstacles he has his full share to contend 



220 HOMESPUN. 

with. In every conceivable way is his patience 
put to the test. So many little trials is he sum- 
moned to endure, and endure in silence. So 
much gossip — so much envy — so much jeal- 
ousy in respect of his family — and he is so 
often headed oJBT at the very point where he 
should have been helped, — his place some- 
times becomes a burden which he cannot carry, 
and his term of real usefulness comes to an 
end. Finally, and worst of all, there is the 
danger of a young man's relapsing into the 
very customs he so positively dislikes. To see 
fine and fresh powers slowly coating with the 
palsying gum of old up-country observances, 
prejudices, and whimsicalities, — to behold a 
young man, full of ardor and promise, falling 
gradually away into the habit of insensibility 
and actual induration, by reason simply of 
some lack, or else of the positive coarseness, 
of those among whom his lot is cast, — is 
Something to make the heart feel sad indeed. 
To be sure, not all country parishes are with 
an influence like this ; yet there are enough 
to make themselves a reproach to religion, and 
their ministers practically useless by becoming 
so thoroughly unhappy. 




THE COUNTRY DOCTOB, 

OLD Dr. Twogood I knew very well. He 
was the sort of man for everybody to 
know, who could. Fond of a story, attached 
to his few rows of well-used books, his parish 
of friends, and his steady, dock-tailed mare, I 
honestly believe no man ever took life, as life 
goes with us all, more humorously, comfort- 
ably, and contentedly than he. Like the min- 
ister, everybody knew him well, or, like the 
sign-post on Sundays, everybody consulted 
him. Rotund, red-faced, and ever disposed to 
be jolly, he was the sample for lean and Cassius- 
like patients to copy after so far as they could. 
They needed but to have a good look at his 
happy face, to give the right turn to the whole 
list of their complaints. There might, indeed, 
have been some miraculous element in it all, — 
like the touching of garment hems in olden 
times, or the going down into healing pools to 
wash. 

I think there are few men so placed in the 



222 HOMESPUN. 

social arrangement, and especially in that of 
the country neighborhood, that their influence 
can be made as general and genial as that of 
the regular physician. -The family doctor is 
the one privileged visitor. He has the key to 
our doors and hearts. He dispenses a great 
deal more healing by his manner than by his 
less intelligible prescriptions. What passes 
his oracular lips often works better service 
than what he writes down in abbreviated 
Latin. The country physician, in the nature 
of things, is drawn by very close and confiden- 
tial relations to his patients. He has a work 
to do peculiarly his own. He is emphatically 
a "family man." His sympathies are all more 
or less domestic, and all his aims centre, or 
appear to do so, in Home. ' 

Scott describes one of these human benefac- 
tors in the "Chronicles of the Canongate," in 
these words : — " There is no creature in Scot- 
land that works harder, and is more poorly 
requited than the country doctor, unless per- 
haps it may be his horse. Yet the horse is, and 
indeed must be, hardy, active, and indefatiga- 
ble, in spite of a rough coat and indifferent con- 
dition ; and so you will often find in his master, 
under a blunt exterior, professional skill and 
enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage 
and science." 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 223 

While practising at his profession, he carriea 
on a farm as well; generally showing as fine 
fruits and as large vegetables as any other 
cultivator in town, and keeping the most 
liberal share of each to bestow upon his friend, 
the minister, along in the sunny days of au- 
tumn. A better garden than Dr. Twogood 
kept and dressed, I think I never knew nor 
saw. There were no vegetables, whether com- 
mon or rare, which he had not industriously 
laid under tribute for family service, through 
the instrumentality of his little patch of land. 
He hoed and grubbed in it by the hour, all by 
himself, — planting his beans, sowing his rad- 
ishes and peas, pulling or scraping the weeds, 
picking bugs most patiently from his cucum- 
ber vines, and stirring the soil where it needed 
mellowing. 

I never left off envying him the pleasure 
he took among his apple-trees, in that pretty 
orchard which made regular avenues across the 
slope back of his house, and thence down into 
the meadows. In that spot he appeared en- 
tirely happy. It was to me a convincing illus- 
tration of what I had an intuitive knowledge 
of before, that our simplest and least costly 
pleasures are worth most to us, and that the 
memory of them abides longest. The Doctor 



224 HOMESPUN, 

looked to me, in that particular spot, like the 
lord of the land ; or, perhaps, like some jolly 
poet among his trees, familiarizing himself 
with the bent of their disposition, one by 
one, — nodding to them whenever they seemed 
to nod, — passing his hands in a friendly way 
up and down their stems, — pulling over their 
boughs toward him, — and plunging his eyes 
into the dense banks of green with which they 
made the landscape beautiful. The whole of it 
suggested to me the picture of the true life ; it 
seemed so simple, so sweet, and so wholesome. 
If a man should run in to ask the Doctor to 
come over and see his wife just as quick as he 
could, or to take in hand one of his children 
who had been stuffing with under-ripe cherries, 
or currants, or apples, he would very likely 
find him — if at all — in a lazy posture in his 
great office-chair, feet piled upon the table 
or braced against the jamb, hands folded with 
an air of permanency across his abdomen, 
and countenance prepared either to dissolve in 
smiles or break up in a horse-laugh, just as cir- 
cumstances might seem to direct. That bit of 
a room, which he styled his " office," had seen a 
deal of medicinal experience in its day. Its 
atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance of 
boluses and gallipots. Plasters and surgical 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 225 

ingenuities ]ay rather promiscuously around. 
The windows were heavy with dust and cur- 
tained with cobwebs ; and as for the floor, it 
was worn bare of carpet and paint with the 
shuffle and tread of heavily booted feet. 

We all went in there one Sunday after- 
noon, just after tea. The old Doctor did n't 
happen to be in the room at the moment, 
but he soon came roystering along in his jolly 
manner from another room, where he said his 
wife had prevailed on him to go through the 
form of taking tea. 

" And now, come," said he ; " I believe 
we 've got a little something or another left 
on the table ; and if we have n't, I 'm certain 
there 's something in the cupboard ! So come 
— come right along ; and just see for your- 
selves how much healthier 't is to live in a 
doctor's house than in some others ! " 

He enjoyed as sound digestion as a man 
could ; hence, of course, his remarkable and 
uninterrupted flow of spirits. An observant 
old physician of Boston once said, that he 
could tell almost any man's creed by the state 
of his liver. Had it been proposed to apply 
this test to Dr. Twogood, it would have been 
found that a more orthodox, sound-at-heart, 
and thoroughly religious man nowhere enjoyed 

15 



226 HOMESPUN. 

existence. It must have been owing, much of 
it, to his excellent digestion — very simple 
recipe for so placid and summer-morning like 
a disposition. 

Riding about the country, and driving over 
the rough lanes and stony roads and grassy 
by-ways which he and his trusty beast knew 
so well, the Doctor became a feature — though 
not a very fixed one — in the rural landscape. 
He invariably rode in a narrow, high-shouldered, 
selfish -looking sulky, — some persons were ill- 
natured enough to say that he might not be 
asked to give a body a lift on the road. But 
Dr. Twogood was not the man to want an ex- 
cuse for doing a selfish deed ; he kept his sulky 
because it was easier for his faithful horse to 
carry him so, — because he had the floor ex- 
actly fitted to the transportation of his instru- 
ments and medicine-chest, — and, finally, be- 
cause it was soonest got into and out of ; 
reasons enough to satisfy the sourest grumbler. 
The old sulky was one of the well-understood 
institutions of the country neighborhood ; jog- 
ging and creaking across the roads,jolting over 
the rocks and loose stones, trundling softly 
down the reaches of green turf that lined the 
old highways, and rolling and rattling at last 
up to the Doctor's door with an air of conse- 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 227 

quence which best betokened the true charac- 
ter of its inmate and owner. 

The old horse, and the old carriage, which a 
man is in the habit of using every day, at 
length wears as much significance as one can 
find in the features, the walk, the dress, or the 
speech of the man himself; and that may stand 
for a reason why I have thus gone a little out 
of my way, taking my reader by the button- 
hole, as it were, to treat in a semi-confidential 
style of the Doctor's sulky. It was as much 
the Doctor's self as his overcoat was, or his 
hat, or his laugh. Had you seen only that in 
the street, the horse drowsily dropping his head 
Upon his knees, you would have been quite 
ready to say you had seen the Doctor himself. 

But the most unaccountable thing is, 

what leads men of like profession to so fall out 
with one another. They are all guilty of it, in 
every profession known. The ministers quarrel, 
(don't try to make me believe they don't!) and 
are jealous of one another, and go off and say 
sour things one of the other, and sometimes 
refuse the bow of recognition in the streets. 
And the lawyers disagree on principle and 
habit both, to say nothing of interest, as any 
one may see for himself by paying a visit to 
the nearest court-room. Authors, too, are a 



228 HOMESPUN. 

quarrelsome race, — irritahile genm^ — and fall 
into cat-and-dog practices, feeling that not to 
be praised is only worse than to hear their 
brethren well spoken of. And so through the 
list. 

Even Dr. Twogood, kind and genial philos- 
opher that he was, never was guilty of loving 
the other Doctor over at Seesaw — Dr. Plas- 
ther — any too well. Not a whit of friend- 
ship was wasted between them. They seemed 
born to dwell on different planets. So heart- 
ily did Dr. Twogood hate the other, Samuel 
Johnson, who liked above all things a sturdy 
hater, would have taken him to his arms. 
Could he have annihilated him with his breath 
alone, poor Plasther would long before have 
quit existence. 

Whenever they met upon the cross-roads, as 
they sometimes did, each pursuing his way to 
the dwellings of his own patients, they saw 
nothing but the trees and stone walls before 
them ; and these they looked at with intense 
attention. They never exchanged salutes, — 
even professional ones. If both chanced to be 
summoned to a consultation on the same case, 
of course they fell to hurling sharp-cornered 
words at one another if it could n't be helped ; 
but it was in a very shying manner. They 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 229 

bolstered up none of their nouns with choice 
adjectives, and cushioned none of their epithets 
with soft adverbs ; but they dealt in marrowy- 
verbs, solid substantives, and very energetic 
pronouns. What was particularly noticeable, 
nearly all these latter parts of speech were 
personal pronouns. What passed from one to 
the other was as direct as a musket-ball, and 
could as readily have been mistaken in its 
meaning. 

The most fun occurred — if there can be fun 
where matters are so serious in their conse- 
Quences — when one was called to attend a 
family where the other could do no more, or 
which had lost faith in him. It was worth 
belonging to the anxious family itself, to wit- 
ness the phenomenon. The rival doctor would 
come stalking in, and exclaim in a tone of au- 
thority before taking his seat, — 

" You 've had Plasther here ? " 

" Yes, Doctor. But we don't think he under- 
stands the case. He said he had done all he 
could, — and so we sent for you ! " 

« Oho ! " bawled the Doctor. « Then after 
finding out be 's a fool, you hurry over after 
me^ just to let me know you don't think me 
one ! A fine way to give me your opinion of 
me, by sending for him ! I 'd a mind not to 



^30 HOMESPUN. 

come at all ! I 'd a notion of letting you suffer 
awhile, just to show you how good 't is ! " 

They sometimes made an effort to pacify 
him, either by offering a clean confession of 
their fault, or by inventing some little family 
excuses, — which were good so far as they 
went, and to a certain extent baffled the scru- 
tiny and defied the objections of the Doctor. 

Once mollified, however, he would calmly 
take his seat by the side of the patient, and 
proceed in the mechanical way to feel the pulse 
and study the tongue ; after which, in rather 
stronger language than before, he fell to la- 
menting the rashness and wrong-headedness 
of some people, — and then to hope they would 
manage to get the scales off their eyes while 
he lived. The scene usually terminated with 
the Doctor's return to a normal and pleasanter 
state of feeling ; in fact, he actually felt better 
for having been ruffled. Once well rid of his 
surplus bile, — whatever it might have been in 
quantity, — he became more companionable 
than ever. 

Dr. Twogood furnished more than a fair av- 
erage specimen of the country doctor. They 
are not all of them such easy souls as he, nor 
so full, even up to the chin, with the milk of 
human kindness. Few could stvle themselves 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 231 

SO thoroughly domestic, or would know how to 
get so much pleasure out of their fruit orchards, 
their cattle, their pigs, and their poultry. Still, 
making due* allowance here and due allowance 
there, they are, as a class, fond of the same 
sorts of pleasures, and inclined to the same 
class of recreative occupations. With all their 
drugs and pills, their preparations and tinct- 
ures, their bleedings and boluses, they form a 
most excellent class of citizens by themselves. 
Some of them are called coarse, and deserved- 
ly ; they would be thought out of the reach of 
ordinary human sympathy. Such are the men 
who will seat you in a chair opposite, and fall 
to descanting on the pulseless heart of some 
person which they have just been dissecting, 
or on the moans and groans of some poor fel- 
low who has lost a limb under their surgical 
knife and saw. We are glad these do not rep- 
resent the profession. It is bad enough that 
there are so many of them. 

In rural communities, the Doctor and his in- 
fluence form an important element. You can 
ill afford to come into the country and overlook 
him. He dwells in a house as imposing as the 
minister's, or the lawyer's ; these three houses, 
like the three men who inhabit them, form the 
chief exceptions to the group of roofs and 



282 HOMESPUN. 

chimneys, and may he allowed to impart a 
character to the whole. If a stranger enters 
the village, he is pointed to one of these three 
houses to begin with. From these he forms 
his idea of the place. 

The habits and calling of a country doctor 
are not, perhaps, invested with as much inter- 
est as are those of the country lawyer, — yet 
they are distinct and noticeable. There stands 
his little office, — either a little box by itself, or 
a room set apart in his own dwelling. There 
is his old horse, trundling the respectable chaise, 
or sulky, behind him. There is his garden, and 
his orchard ; and there stretch his modest out- 
lands, for which he is as much to be envied as 
those whose longer titles form the larger part 
of the town records. He is one of the genu- 
inely " solid men " of the place. His influence 
rills through the whole community. His ad- 
vice is more sought after even than the min- 
ister's ; certainly more than the lawyer's, for 
the latter makes a practice of charging for his. 

These genial, jovial, domestic old doctors 
deserve more than the mention of mere words. 
They are our sterling men, props of the social 
edifice. In times of trial, they show that fibre 
of genuine courage which, in men of other call- 
ings, does not always make its appearance. I 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 233 

duly respect and honor them ; some of them I 
could love. In spite of ipecac and emetics, 
blue pills and blister plasters, tourniquets and 
surgical saws, I cannot help my attachment for 
them, one and all. So intimately are science 
and the commonest common-sense mixed in 
their characters, it is ten to one that, before the 
world looks for it, it will catch a ray of light 
from a quarter generally thought dark and un- 
promising. A good country doctor, of the real 
old stamp and style, is, in truth, no such ordi- 
nary man. Not many grown men and women 
of the neighborhood, but owe him all thanks 
for the prolongation of their very unsatisfac- 
tory baby existence. 



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TS^£7 COUNTBT LAWYEB. 

IT so happens that my impressions of coun- 
try 'squires date back in my early youth ; 
and, to be candid, I cannot exactly say if I was 
possessed chiefly of a dislike or a fear of them 
all. 

At this moment there rises in my mind's eye 
the great legal functionary of the little town 
of FoUifog. In his little box of an office he 
sits in his arm-chair, of a summer afternoon, 
his feet fastened to the window-sill, his thumbs 
hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and 
his firm-set head as full of wisdom as an egg 
is of meat. If a client happens to be sharing 
the hour with him, he is either talking in that 
resonant tone which so impresses itself on all 
his clients' minds, or the brazen echoes of his 
professional laugh are reverberating up and 
down the village street. 

He rejoices in that voice of his, which is so 
hard and loud, esteeming it a gift, by whose 
help he impresses his personal power upon cli- 



THE COUNTRY LAWYER. 235 

ents and opponents alike. When he rises in 
court to wrangle and argue, it is with a delib- 
erateness which few men can parallel. The 
sweet and bitter cud of legal lore he chews 
without cessation. Fortified within the en- 
trenchments of professional dignity, he sallies 
out only when he feels very sure of bringing 
back the enemy captive. All the little boys 
look up to him in wonder, remembering what 
a hand he has had in sending off thieves and 
drunkards and otherwise questionable charac- 
ters to the county lock-up. Mothers have a 
habit of looking askance at him on Sundays, 
while he is at such pains to make a display of 
wristbands to the congregation, wondering, 
perhaps, if he is really like other men, or if he 
possesses no more than a vulgar-fractional na- 
ture, about equally divided between the horse 
and the human, — griffinish and fabulous. 
None of them are fond of thinking he would 
prove a match for their daughters ; and yet, too 
many of them would actually be proud of such 
a connection, even if they could foresee the 
unsatisfactory lives their girls would lead in 
consequence. 

There are some few persons, and particularly 
in country towns, who imagine it a great lift to 
be a lawyer. They regard this cheiracter as 



236 HOMESPUN. 

the Jupiter Tonans of the rural Olympus. 
They associate all that is great and worthy in 
the State with his occupation. He, of all the 
rest, is the one man who attends to the busi- 
ness of everybody else. He is as handy at 
private as at public affairs. He draws up wills 
for dying persons — has a hand in the settle- 
ment of estates — throws his professional guar- 
dianship around the orphans and fatherless — 
becomes the trustee of property of all descrip- 
tions and values — manages delicate questions 
arising between the different members of the 
same family — improves the slender estates of 
widows and maiden ladies — attends the jus- 
tice courts, those rural standards and institutes 
of law and order — helps employ a teacher for 
the Academy — and is sometimes an active 
member of that very important body known as 
the Church Committee. There is, in fact, no 
office which the village advocate and attorney 
is not qualified to fill. Let it be never so trifling 
and inconsiderable, he will manage to invest it 
with such pomp and circumstance of learned 
phraseology as shall make it seem scarcely less 
important and dignified than the Presidency it- 
self. It is indeed a wonder, what a faculty a 
country lawyer has of extracting the very es- 
sence of dignity out of some kinds of occu- 
pation, in themselves so pitiful and mean. 



THE COUNTRY LAWYER. 237 

In the same town of Follifog lived and prac- 
tised, too, Squire Brigham. The Squire was 
one of the reputed Solons of the place. He 
was a man very generally " looked up to," by 
foe as well as by friend. Aside from the doc- 
tor and the minister, no one was popularly 
reckoned wiser than he. In the stores and at 
the tavern men listened to him with eagerness, 
and felt grateful to catch the very drippings 
from the eaves of his wisdom — without a fear 
of being asked for a fee. He could stand and 
face people in church with a settled assurance 
that was worth a fortune to any lawyer ; and 
few were the eyes which could wrestle with 
his, and not catch a sudden fall. 

In his profession, no man was ever known 
to be more stirring than Squire Brigham. Ev- 
erybody knew that, to their cost. Numbers 
who had gone to law under his lead for " dam- 
ages " were quite ready to admit that they got 
them. By the force of his energy and the per- 
suasiveness of his eloquence, he had managed 
to secure plentiful emoluments, and was — at 
the particular time I speak of — on the high 
road to public office and favor. Long ago had 
the popular voice pronounced him a " smart " 
lawyer, which means whatever you please. 
What the popular heart might have chosen to 



238 HOMESPUN. 

say of him, — - supposing it possessed so " mi- 
raculous " an organ as a tongue, — would not 
so well suit this present purpose to repeat. He 
occupied as fine a house as any man in town 
already. He " stood high " with the inhabi- 
tants, and exchanged familiar calls with the 
minister's family; and in the days when the 
ministers of sequestered towns in New Eng- 
land were virtually Popes in their little realms, 
this one fact was a sure guaranty of respecta- 
bility, if not an actual passport to local emi- 
nence. 

The lawyer's house stood behind a couple 
of silvery sycamores, scarcely more stately than 
himself, that imparted a mansion-like appear- 
ance to the dwelling itself; whilst within the 
cincture of its white filagree fence throve shrubs 
and flowers enough to have made the heart of 
any country lawyer as soft as a woman's, a 
poet's, or a story-teller's. The front walk was 
of broad and clean flagging-stones, which was 
a luxury very few of the householders round 
about could well afford. A huge lilac-bush 
stood beneath either front window, and fur- 
nished, in the season of flowering, fragrance 
for the whole length of the street; while it 
unhappily led not a few little boys, on their 
way to Sabbath-school, into desperate bogs of 



THE COUNTRY LAWYER. 239 

temptation, from a desire to snap off spikes of 
the royal purple blossoms and stick them in 
their button-holes. Snow-balls, too, were grow- 
ing in immense clusters in that yard ; and, here 
and there, a hollyhock, a bunch of pinks, and 
a screen of morning-glory vines before a win- 
dow. 

But Squire Brigham is a representative of 
the " upper class " pf country lawyers ; Mr. 
Jenkins is several grades below him. He — 
Jenkins — is a much younger man. He has n't 
yet taken a wife. He is not allowed, by the 
adjudication of public sentiment, to do a good 
many things that a man like Judge Bingham 
— for example — can do with perfect impu- 
nity. 

He sits — Jenkins still — in an office with 
the proportions of a snug hen-coop ; and all 
around him busy spiders weave their webs for 
giddy flies, suggesting the meshes he is all the 
time weaving in his brain to entangle unsus^ 
pecting men and women. The new calf-bound 
law books that give his shelves an imposing 
air, and litter his table as with an appearance 
of business, call up visions of dead-and-buried 
lawsuits, — ghosts of long-departed plaintiffs 
and defendants who will never enter the legal 
tilt-yard more, — estates rent into ravelings by 



240 HOMESPUN. 

the lingual dexterity of cunning and voluble 
lawyers, — together with a body of established 
principles of law and equity, that leave all par- 
ties to an issue as much in the fog as before 
the attorneys and judges conspired to develop 
such confusion. 

Justice Courts furnish one of the staple 

entertainments of a country town, or village. 
On rainy days, they are peculiarly interesting. 
The male part of the population is in a state 
of what is styled " high cockolorum." On the 
occasions when these are held, there is leisure 
enough for everybody, no matter what his trade 
or occupation. The men can't work out in the 
fields ; the tanners would hardly keep dry 
around their sloppy vats in the oozy yards ; 
there is no wood to be hauled to the back- 
door ; and the only talk at the store is of ap- 
proaching Court. 

This is held either in the open bar-room, or 
the more spacious hall above stairs. In this 
particular Court it is where Mr. Jenkins aw^akes 
to a sense of his individual glory. In the 
frowning presence of the Justice of the Peace, 
and of that miscellaneous tribunal whose ap- 
plause he craves with such eagerness, he brow- 
beats, cross-examines, and habitually bullies 
timid witnesses, — male and female, — and 



THE COUNTRY LAWYER. 241 

returns to his coop of an office after the day's 
work is done, secure of the fame for which he 
strives and about which he fondly dreams. 

If you could but hehold him in that notice- 
able hall of justice, thus invested with the high 
sense of his own importance, gazing so vacantly 
over the crowd of staring spectators, running 
his hand so carelessly through his hair, hurling 
his high-keyed interrogatories at the abashed 
witnesses, watching every chance to convulse 
the too ready auditory with laughter, bold and 
brazen in his address, rarely, if ever, thrown off 
his guard, compelling the village Shallow be- 
hind the table to shrink into the proportions 
of submissive inferiority, running over at the 
mouth with legal phrases and the technical 
lingo of legal instruments, reclining entirely 
upon his own dignity, assured that, of all the 
rest, he is nearly the largest toad in the entire 
town puddle, and, in fine, quite satisfied with 
his cause, his audience, himself, and his pros- 
pects for the future ! 

The character of the country lawyer's occu- 
pations cannot, of course, yield any large share 
of refined social and domestic enjoyment. He 
cannot well afford, from the very nature of the 
case, to put his sensibilities out to school.* He 
lives, and must hope to live, chiefly upon the 

16 



242 HOMESPUN. 

unhappy differences and discords of the limited 
world around him. The more his neighbors 
fall out, the better it is for him. He watches 
for new chances for a lawsuit as sharply as a 
cat waits at a rat-hole. As for the finer senti- 
ments of local friendship, he can ill afford to 
indulge them. They are luxuries which cost 
too much. 

This is the thorough-bred pettifogger. 

The work he performs is small drudgery, at the 
most. It may be necessary, much of it ; but 
that necessity even does not redeem it from the 
imputation of meanness. Yet, if such a re- 
flection ever stings him, he is consoled with 
the thought that he is pursuing a " profession " 
— pursuing it just as much greater men have 
done before him, and with a brand of ambition 
blazing somewhere in his heart. He is strug- 
gling for a name ; scanning the political hori- 
zon, from time to time, as a mariner comes up 
on deck and studies the clouds ; living among, 
and altogether upon, his fellow-citizens, yet not 
of them, in any true and hearty sense. 

He is in the full blaze of his glory in the 
County Court term. If he cannot bring a case 
before that court, he is esteemed but a " scant 
pattern" of a lawyer. It is at that bar the 
country lawyer is in full feather. The quiet 



THE COUNTRY LAWYER. 243 

little shire town of the county, at these court 
terms, overflows with rustic humanity, come to 
look after its own and into everybody's else 
business. The accommodations of the pair of 
rival taverns are put to their severest strain. 
Through the days, all the stalls in the stables 
and the stands in the horse-sheds are occupied. 
The judge, lawyers, and witnesses, — saying 
nothing of the hangers-on who attend court as 
regularly as they do a muster, — have monop- 
olized stables and dormitories. The town car- 
^ ries its head erectly now. Writs, summons, 
capiases, copies, mittimuses, executions, and 
the whole of that sort of legal paper- work, fly 
from hand to hand like ballots at a tight elec- 
tion. Sleepy crowds stand or sit through the 
proceedings in the court-room, or discuss, out 
of doors, the merits of the cases and the law- 
yers, as they come on. There is a stream of 
male and female witnesses, going up and down 
stairs ; and the lawyers are marching them in 
and out of lobbies and anterooms for prepara- 
tory drill in the science of giving in testimony. 
It looks as if large boys were playing at trials, 
and not altogether like serious men, transact- 
ing serious business. 

The country lawyer, however, is not 

what he was in the days of our fathers ; and 



244 HOMESPUN. 

he knows it as well as any one else. His 
glory has in a great degree departed. Since 
imprisonment for debt became obsolete, and 
debtors otherwise grew to be the masters rather 
than the slaves of their creditors, his business 
and corresponding importance have shrivelled 
and disappeared. Though still as great a 
character as any other in the town, he finds 
his sway clipped in both wings. He falls in 
with a man,' now and then, who knows about 
as much good law as he does. He mistrusts 
that somehow intelligence has got abroad, — 
that the dam has been breached in some weak 
place, and the long-pent waters are overflowing 
the whole land. 

Hence, he has been induced to take a lesson 
or two in modesty, and in forbearance also. He 
sees that it is well to pay a little more respect 
to popular wishes than the men of the old 
school were in the habit of doing. It may be 
a fact, he thinks, that men are growing more 
human and less legal. They are beginning to 
look to other methods of persuasion than those 
harsh and unsympathetic ones which are com- 
prised in the technicalities, the musty learning, 
and the mandatory spirit of that grand science 
which goes, the world over, by the name of 
Law. 



THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER. 

A COUNTRY Post-Office, as a general 
matter, is simply a country store, with 
some odd corner railed off for secresy, if not 
security. Anybody can go around behind 
there, if he is so fortunate as to be in the con- 
fidence — social or political — of the village 
Postmaster. It is chiefly the women who step 
up to that desk timidly and doubtingly, as if 
asking a favor, — or sidle along, as girls do, 
and inquire for a letter in the softest whisper, 
lest even their names should be pronounced 
aloud in that public presence. To the rude 
boys the place is caviare. For them alone is 
the iron rail spiked down so rigidly into the 
counter, — to keep off trousers' stuffs and 
heavy swinging boots. 

Kegs and barrels — nail-boxes and soap- 
boxes — customers and letter-writers — men 
and boys — women and dogs — the box-stove 
and the department letter-boxes — are all 
mingled at the post-office establishment with 



246 HOMESPUN. 

picturesque incongruity. Of a close, wintry 
evening, the apartment is redolent of savors 
unnumbered and indescribable. A row of 
men sit perched upon the smooth-faced coun- 
ter ; a row of boy«, and men too, sit on boxes 
and nail-kegs opposite the stove ; whistling 
idlers stand and stare at the hoe and mop 
handles so nicely balanced overhead, possibly 
calculating if they would " hurt " much if they 
fell on their crowns ; the iron stove roars, and 
growls, and sputters, from being frequently 
stirred up with sticks ; little boys come in, 
every few minutes, and look up into the ex- 
pressionless faces of the men sitting idly 
around, — or listen attentively, with open 
mouths, to what they happen to be gossiping 
about, — and then run uneasily out again : 
in the solemn pauses, the dull and heavy tick- 
ings of a wooden-wheeled Connecticut clock, 
perched up among the snuff-jars and preserve- 
pots, sound like Fate solemnly notching oiF 
Time, as it passes; now and then, one of 
them, with an acuter sense of hearing (or longer 
ears, perhaps) than the rest, lifts his head and 
announces that the " stage is coming ; " and, 
like the turning over of your hand, all present 
get up and shake themselves out, against the 
arrival of the government messenger and the 
fetching in of the mail-bags. 



THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER. 247 

It makes a pretty scene. Teniers might have 
added it to his portfolio. How extremely odd 
it strikes one, thinking of all the men in a little 
town grouped around a hot stove in a country 
store, under a full headway of gossip about the 
aifairs of other people, and, to appearance, as 
much impressed with the weight of their re- 
sponsibility as if the nation itself rested on 
their round shoulders. 

Their wives at home, poor women ! — 

else how would the affairs of the house get on ? 
They must not go a-gadding ; but the lords, — 
they may sit about in the post office till they 
have to come home for patches to their trou- 
sers'-seats, and not a word of complaint must 
be uttered against it ! 

. Well, and the mail-coach rattles up. 

If in the winter, it is after dark a long while ; 
but if it be summer weather, the sweet twi- 
light is gloaming all over the town. Such 
•delicious draughts of enjoyment as one may 
drink in, on the summer nights, at this partic- 
ular hour, — draughts like the cool airs of spice 
islands, that play about one's temples and dally 
with his very heart ! 

The echoes of the driver's voice are to be 
heard all over the secluded street, — " Get up 
along ! GUang ! " The heavy rattling of the 



248 HOMESPUN. 

wheels makes music against the sides of the 
meeting-house, and fills the town with the 
notes of its warning. The post-office door 
opens, and forth steps a boy to take the mail ; 
and a pencil of light from the one or two tal- 
low dips within projects itself far out into the 
desert of darkness. 

The cluttered little office is instantly in a 
hubbub. Every eye is turned on the mail-bag 
and the Postmaster. At this particular mo- 
ment, the latter is at his zenith. The by-stand- 
ers watch him as he proceeds to void the 
responsible pouch of its precious contents. 
They count up every package, parcel, and 
newspaper that comes to the light, and appear 
as much pleased with what they discover as 
children are over the miscellaneous contents 
of their Christmas-stockings. They give their 
minds to the study of color, size, thickness, 
and relative importance of each article that is 
exposed. 

Many of those nearest the counter, and 
those who, by reason of age or property-value, 
feel " privileged " in the place, venture upon 
taking a piece or two of mail-matter into their 
hands, which they proceed to " heft " and make 
shrewd computations about. Some of the 
more forward lads crowd up under the men^s 



THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER. 249 

elbows ; and you can find an odd head here, 
and an odd body there, and a spare leg or arm 
somewhere else, which, anatomically arranged, 
would fairly present you with the manners 
common to country boys in the post-office, at 
the hour when the mail arrives. 

In good time, the contents of the bag are all 
assorted ; that is to say, after waiting, and 
waiting. It would astonish an old Hollander 
himself, — ■ what a dreadfully sloio man the 
country Postmaster is ; the more there is press- 
ing upon him for dispatch, the less he is actu- 
ally able to accomplish. Nothing confuses him, 
for he will not permit it. Still, the miscella- 
neous talk about the room does bother him, 
and he now and then looks up sharply over 
his spectacles, as a thorough school-master 
looks around his little realm of a school-room. 

When, at length, the critical moment does 
come, he begins without the perceptible flutter 
of a nerve. '' Mr. Atkins ! " — he calls out, in 
a tone of appropriate solemnity. The gentle- 
man by that name makes a half bow, as if he 
would say, " Excuse me for a moment, all 
hands ! " — slips off his seat on the head of a 
barrel of Genessee flour standing in the dark- 
est corner of the store, ahd supplicatingly holds 
out his hand above the counter. Or, if he 



250 , HOMESPUN. 

cannot pierce the crowd, a file of good men 
and true pass over the documents to him from 
head-quarters, every one of whom embraces 
such opportunity to study the post-mark as the 
tallowy flare of the light affords him. 

" Mr. Battles ! " — again sings up the offi- 
cial at the desk. Everybody looks around to 
find Mr. Battles. He is sought after w^ith as 
anxious care as the hundredth sheep that went 
astray. His acquaintance explore every corner 
and cranny, look one side and another of the 
stove-pipe, and finally respond — " Not here ! " 
Then — " Mr. Cannikin ! " He comes forward 
as far as the jam permits him, and is put in 
possession of his mail, much after the style of 
Mr. Atkins. Then — « Miss Fairmade ! " At 
which some of the young men exchange jokes 
in a low voice, while a little boy — who has 
been on the lookout for his pretty sister near 
the counter — reaches out his tawny hand and 
makes an effective grab for it and carries it 
off. 

So on, through the list. To those who go 
without a word to their own boxes and bring 
away their mails with a tap on the glass, 
this picture may seem an exaggeration ; but 
back in the country, and altogether beyond 
town-reach, it will be recognized at a glance 



THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER. 251 

for the truth. Again and again have we heard 
our name called out In the ears of the town 
magnates, and received what mail matter was 
rightfully ours through the hands of we could 
not tell how many accommodating men and 
boys, mixed together in officious confusion. 



On mooted points of law — especially 



constitutional law — the country Postmaster is 
strong beyond any one's estimate. He has 
the mother-wit to keep a handful of str-ay old 
Congressional Reports, bound and lettered, 
on the dusty shelf at his back, — as well as a 
more solid-looking copy of the Statutes, in im- 
posing calf ; and, with this legal stock in trade, 
he sets the town at defiance. Of course he is 
not to be contradicted on matters pertaining to 
the nation and its welfare, for, sustaining such 
close relations with the Government, how is it 
to be supposed that any other man can know 
some things as well as he ? Even Goldsmith's 
school-master is no match for him, in the line 
of " arguing still." Not even a member of the 
President's Cabinet can give an opinion with 
more pragmatic precision, or deliver himself 
with greater assurance of the intentions of the 
august Washington authorities. He stands 
for the village Rajah — the Great Mogul — at 



252 HOMESPUN. 

the head of the political wigwam of the place. 
National politics take their local coloring by 
being passed through the rather opaque me- 
dium of his official commentary. He is 
sketched, in the party's mind, as the one man 
who keeps the keys, the seals, and the secrets. 
If a single man contemplates so reckless a step 
as party backsliding, or defection, he of all the 
rest is close behind him to make him quake in 
whatever clothes he happens to have on ! 

Thus does the Postmaster practically be- 
come the centre of town patronage and town 
consequence. All look up to him, as they do 
to the village flag-staff, from which the " stars 
and stripes " are in the habit of waving. If 
any grumble at this or at that, it makes very 
little difference : they are obliged to keep on 
even terms with him, and pocket all their dis- 
satisfactions in silence. The women either 
like or dislike him, — and that very decidedly. 
The younger portion, however, are careful to 
drop no syllable that can reach the Postmas- 
ter's family, and so make infinite trouble for 
themselves. 

When they trip across into the office, they 
expect a joke from him, rather slyly, about 
their distant correspondents, — which shows 
with what studious thoroughness he informs 



THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER. 253 

himself, and what a memory, passing all won- 
der, he has. Indeed, it affords him intense sat- 
isfaction to poke fun at the girls about their 
beaux, and to tease them with intent to draw 
forth still more of their little love-secrets. 

Thus, no doubt, would he like to pass long 
afternoons, alternately running over odd papers 
which tardy subscribers have failed to call for, 
and gossiping with the girls concerning the 
trifling love-secrets that form the staple of 
their letters from places not always very far 
off. 

It is, therefore, an unpardonable mistake to 
take city postmasters — the New York, and 
Philadelphia, and Boston magnates -r- as the 
fair representatives of these officials through- 
out the land. If you would make a study of 
the Postmaster, you must contemplate those 
who compose, under government favor, the 
rank-and-file of the office-holding army. In 
the rural districts the real Postmaster excels. 
There he stands forth, statuesque in his glory, 
— columnar and individual in the social land- 
scape. The whole town leans on him, — re- 
volves around him. He attracts all local and 
personal interests, like iron-filings, to his offi- 
cial lodestone. 




THE POOB-HOUSE. 

THERE is many a person who is born with 
a dread of some day " coming on the 
town ; " and they actually do what they are 
able — unwittingly, of course — to realize 
their fears. Theirs is a peculiarly unfortunate 
inheritance ; for, by all odds, the continual 
shrinking from imaginary evil is the crudest 
test of the elasticity of the human spirit. 

Yet we are not ourselves to forget that 

the author of the immortal Declaration died 
poor, leaving his friends to devise a friendly 
lottery-scheme on his behalf; and another Vir- 
ginia President's remains lay for many a year 
without so much as a slab of stone to mark 
the spot where they were buried ; and a 
wealthy patriot like Robert Morris, — the 
financier of the Revolution, whose Hercules 
shoulder lifted our national wagon out of the 
miry difficulties in which it was set, — even he 
was thrown into jail for debt, and suffered 
what common souls cannot conceive of. 



THE POOR-HOUSE. 255 

Perhaps, too, these timid ones have some of 
them heard of Columbus in chains ; or of 
Captain John Smith in a London hovel, dying 
in beggary and want; or of Beau Brummel 
coming to a pauper's end in a mendicant hos- 
pital at Caen ; or they reflect that, since the 
periodic revulsions of these latter days have 
held the social road, our most affluent men are 
suddenly smitten as with a leprosy, and cast 
down into the pit of beggary and despair. 
There is, after all, much more in these things 
than either the careless or self-reliant person 
dreams of; and what wonder, then, that there 
should at least be some to live and die in the 
dark cloud of this fear, making their world 
hardly more than a cruel system of imprison- 
ment. 

The Poor-house is but a dismal, doleful 
place, at best. In many of the country towns 
of New England, the town's poor — nick- 
named paupers — are regularly hired out to 
the lowest bidder. He takes the job off the 
town's hands, risks from sickness and death 
thrown in. He estimates pretty closely how 
much work he may be able to wring out of 
this one on the farm, and of that one in the 
house, and of a third in the shop or at the 
saw-mill. He prudently reckons their capacity 



256 HOMESPUN. 

for labor, their average stock of health, their 
sum total of appetite, and the proximate ex- 
pense of clothing them, just as the man of the 
South used to reckon expenses and income for 
a gang of negroes he thought to purchase and 
put into his fields ; and if it so happens, at 
any time in the course of the year, that the 
balance shows signs of going over to the 
wrong side of the account, is he not fruitful 
enough in expedients, and sharp enough, and 
has he not at his disposal nerve enough, too, 
to experiment on a reduction in fuel or fare, or 
at any point, in fact, where he is .likely to 
make himself good against that horrible ogre 
— a loss ? I 

I do actually know I should prefer to die 
outright, to going to the Poor-house, such as 
that institution commonly stands out in the 
social landscape. In the first place, there is 
no warm or tender feeling there, nothing that 
can begin to compensate a suffering heart 
for the losses it has already incurred. It is a 
dismal place, too. It seems to stand off at 
such a distance from social life, like some of 
the pest-houses that w^ere set apart in the fields 
or woods, in other days. It bears no more rela- 
tion to the word Home than the common hos- 
pital does, if indeed so much. No spirit of 



The poor-house. 257 

love sits at its cheerless hearths ; no warm 
lights of affection, or even of hope, ever break 
through its clingy windows. No symptoms of 
elastic, healthy life are there. Only ghosts of 
human spirits, traversing without purpose the 
empty chambers and echoing halls. It is the 
Bastile of society, whose ponderous key, after 
the cruel walls shall have been thrown down, 
I trust will be hung above the mantel of some 
great humanitarian redeemer. 

But, of all other things, a country Poor-house ! 
— where the traffic in human flesh and human 
souls is just as much winked at as it ever 
was in the Brazils, or Cuba ; where human 
wretches and wrecks are brought, after the 
world is well through with them, and made to 
give up still another instalment of service, for 
the benefit chiefly of him who gets the con- 
tract ! Last year, you might have found them 
quartered at the farthest limit of the town, and 
with a proper keeper, perhaps, whose character 
was the best pledge of his kindness ; this year, 
they have been huddled off, in cold and stormy 
weather, to the opposite town limit, — any- 
where from three to seven miles distant, — and 
put under the iron thumb of a man who has 
no soul himself, nor stops to ask if others are 

any better endowed than he. And the next 
ir 



258 HOMESPUN. 

year — God help them ! They no more know 
who their owner may be than so many Vir- 
ginia slaves in a Richmond pen ! 

There appears before my eyes, this 

moment, the whitewashed stone structure, 
looking so very hard and cruel, that formed one 
of the social outworks of my native town, — a 
low, gloomy building, with a prison-like en- 
trance into a stone-paved hall, and long benches 
standing against the walls outside, whereon 
many a weary heart has sat with its sorrowful 
burdens, that has since entered upon a more 
cheerful lot. My young imagination always 
associated these objects on the outside benches 
with lives of wretchedness, drearily dragged 
out to their end, — and figures of bent and 
wasted men and women, muttering to them- 
selves snatches of the rosy memories which 
had their bloom far, far back in youth. 

On the pleasant Saturday afternoons a squad 
of us — all " good boys," of course — were 
used to ramble across the river, to gratify noth- 
ing better than a morbid curiosity, or, possibly, 
a fugitive impulse with a dash of humor in 
it ; — and never did my feet point themselves 
home again from that place, without an almost 
audible thanksgiving in my heart. Glad 
enough was I to feel that I still had a home, 



THE PO OR-HO USE. 259 

where all the boyish fancies and sentiments 
might brood. Secretly, but continually, I re- 
joiced that there was still a something be- 
tween me and the poor-house. As the recol- 
lection of those decrepit figures, those wan and 
wrinkled faces, those profoundly sad eyes re- 
turned upon me so vividly, I quickened my 
pace to be farther from so dreary a scene. And 
still a morbid desire drew me back again ; and 
on the very next Saturday afternoon we were 
all of us prowling about the dingy premises 
once more, watching with boyish intentness for 
the regular coming in and going out of our 
wretched favorites. 

There was one thin, little, sharp-featured 
woman, who was reputed love-cracked; she 
wandered about without any sort of restraint, 
and without shoes, at that ; and dressed in 
extremely short clothes. Her gray, elfin-like 
hair was clipped close, with the exception of a 
couple of horn-locks, and her high forehead 
was plaited with the very finest of wrinkles. 
She had a habit of starting up suddenly from 
her seat, and hurrying to touch her fingers to 
some particular object, — perhaps no more 
than a nail-head on the floor, — that momen- 
tarily attracted her. Down she sat in one of 
the ash-bottomed chairs, and up she got as 



260 HOMESPUN. 

quick as she sat down. All the while her thin 
lips were in motion, mumbling or whispering. 
Some of the other paupers insisted that she 
was talking of the unfaithful one who had 
brought her to her present wretched estate ; 
and some declared she was in league with the 
Evil One, to destroy all within the house ; and 
the rest were satisfied to treat her with a mild 
and inefficient sort of disdain, as if mere com- 
passion would scarcely cover a case so pecu- 
liar. But those little gray eyes, now twinkling 
with fragmentary intelligence, and now glaring 
at you as if they would pierce you through, — 
those two or three elfin-locks, beaten with the 
rains and blanched with the winds for many a 
year, — that thin and slightly bent form, clad 
so scantily and ever in such active motion, — 
all these will hold fast in my memory, though 
I should live to reach fourscore. 

Then there was an idiotic fellow in the 
group, who furnished us a good share of our 
amusement in those days. He said little, of 
course, and those few articulations were so in- 
distinct and accompanied with such grimaces 
and facial distortions as to fairly frighten us. 
He never tired of asking for a cent ; — " Do- 
do-c?o gP me c-c-cent ! " And he implored us 
for a cracker with such a hideous squint of his 



THE POOR-HOUSE. 261 

eye, and twist of his lower jaw, and roll of his 
thick tongue, as to make us laugh out even 
while we felt such true compassion. 

Still another creature-character there was, 
who chanced to be gifted with just intelligence 
enough to feel sure that he was brighter than 
the idiotic subject ; he was a clear " better-than- 
thou " individual, and so far as poor foolish 
Sam was concerned, delighted to betray it. He 
was a great talker, and had the eyes of a 
lobster, and a tongue that would crowd itself 
out of his mouth. If he saw that Sam was 
furnishing us with amusement, up he came to 
display his own superior parts upon so gloomy 
a foil. It would indeed be a pity if one could 
not shine, with a poor idiot to furnish the back- 
ground. This voluble fellow took upon him- 
self an immensely patronizing care of the other^ 
as if, in some time past, he might have been 
appointed his guardian. He woijld come 
up and pull down the upraised hands of the 
pitiful fool, and offer him advice about what 
he ought to do and say before us. " Seems 
to me " — he would break out, with a proud 
glance around on us — " Sam don't know 
nothin' at all ! He-he-he ! " Then he would 
order him to ask for his cracker, or his cent ; 
and suddenly turn his back upon him, and 
laugh, neither he nor we knew at what. 



262 HOMESPUN. 

At length this very fellow came to amnse us 
most of all, though he little dreamed it was so. 
We used to nudge one another, and get our- 
selves all prepared to enjoy these displays of 
his fancied superiority over the weaker fool. 
The trick fails to provoke the same astonish- 
ment now, since the world has opened its wider 
view to me. 

The remainder of that pauper regiment 
comes up before me in review, clad in their 
cheap and scant pauper uniform. Black and 
white — men and women — old and young, — 
alas ! alas I for the pledges and promises and 
false lights of our social system ! A decayed, 
unhappy, aimless race ; consumed of " dry 
rot ; " thrust out and kept out of the sodial 
world by the hand of actual benevolence ; 
shut up from the living sympathy of their fel- 
low-creatures ; faded, worn, and broken, wait- 
ing in a sort of sullen silence for the open- 
ing of the great door that swings on golden 
hinges, and is to let them into a light which 
no man can obstruct any more. 

A Poor-house starts strange thoughts, 

out of time and tune, harsh and dissonant, — 
which cannot instantly be put down. You 
find there persons whose lives had as prom- 
ising a beginning as your own, but who have 



THE POOR-HOUSE. 263 

been able, out of the body of their combined 
exertions and aspirations, to reach but this 
inauspicious goal. There, too, you see, close 
beside such, other persons whose natures had 
foul stains on them from the beginning, which 
would not wash out ; and whose very presence 
imparts to the place a lazaar-house character, 
as if it were actually peopled with moral in- 
fections. And pale and suffering women, too, 
who have vainly followed, in the blindness of 
love, faithless and forgetful husbands, till their 
wearied feet have finally brought them to this 
common refuge of sorrow and despair. Or, 
now and then, may be caught the glimpse of 
a child's face, little realizing how deeply the 
brand of Pauper is to be burned into its after 
life. 

And always may be found there, gathered . 
as into a mouldering corner, the relics of an 
once vigorous generation, mumbling the broken 
histories of their early life, crouching in dim 
and shadowy recesses, chatting of happy 
times such as this world will never bring them 
again, sitting on long benches in the sun and 
idly watching the flies, and, let us hope, now 
and then catching a glimpse of the far-off re- 
ality which they fondly believe will one day 
be theirs. 



264 HOMESPUN. 
Heaven keep all of us clear of the Poor- 



bouse ! It is a place, the sight of which can 
check the current suddenly in young veins. 
Distinct and lonely it stands out in the plane 
of the thoughts, just as it does in the lap of 
the landscape. It has no other effect than to 
excite inward fears and bring on sudden creep- 
ings and shudderings. There is no token 
whatever, wdthin it or about it, of the blessed 
life that lies concealed in the single word — - 
Home ! a word that, next to Mother, lives and 
lingers longest in the human heart. 






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TSE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 

THAT noted polygamist and wife-murderer, 
known as Henry the Eighth, did no more 
for the cause of learning in Old England when 
he invited Erasmus over to take a Greek Pro- 
fessorship at Oxford, than our puritan an- 
cestry, when they built the first school-house 
in the New England woods. Through its hum- 
ble door has passed the power that is to-day 
engaged in conquering and civilizing the con- 
tinent. 

At the time when I knew it, the little 

red school-house stood at the fork of the road ; 
and though there were other school-houses in 
other districts of the town, this was accounted 
the only one of which special mention was 
thought worthy to be made. 

Mr. John Porringer — a man somewhere 
within the broad-growing shadows of forty- 
five years — " kept " this school, and was in 
the way of keeping it so long as he lived and 
liked. The notion seemed to have taken root 



266 HOMESPUN. 

in town, that he held a sort of life-lease of the 
building, if it should be used so long for the 
ends of education. If — here and there — 
one and another did rub his eyes and wonder 
if nobody else could keep that school as well 
as Mr. John Porringer, an opiate was newly 
administered by some mysterious process, and 
people soon forgot to ask the question alto- 
gether. 

A seven-by-nine vestibule, constructed of 
rough boards, contained the pail of water, with 
the bright tin dipper bobbing about on the sur- 
face, — while all over its three sides pegs and 
nails were driven, that bore large crops of juve- 
nile clothing, assorted and graded to the ages 
and sizes of its \vearers. In winter you might 
have mistaken it for a shop, where some dealer 
kept sleds and skates to sell: and the junks of 
snow brought in on the stout boots of the boys 
would have charmed even a school committee 
all the way from Nova Zembla on runners. 

In the summer time Mr. Porringer surrend- 
ered his rule and frown, and went to ploughing 
and hoeing and laying stone wall on the farm, 
thereby making an opening for somebody of 
secondary ability. The larger boys and girls 
being in demand at home during the warm 
months, in a general way, a quiet female 



THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 267 

teacher was thought equal to the manage- 
ment of the few small ones remaining ; and 
the town paid her at the rate of two dollars 
per week with the privilege of " boarding her- 
self." All this arrangement was but little 
better than an infant school, however, to which 
industrious mothers sent their weans to keep 
them from under foot, and give them the 
chance of a couple of sweet naps a day across 
the hard benches. 

The school-room was in its blaze of glory in 
the winter. Then Mr. Porringer returned, to 
resume the magisterial badges, — the royal 
sceptre and crown. 

He was a picture, and so stands out 

before my eyes to this day, — a tall, lank, bony 
person, with feet and hands of pretty similar 
dimensions ; a head high and narrow, with a 
prodigious phrenological slope from the crown ; 
stiff, straight hair, and fiercely black, brushed 
in a peak above the regions of his intellect; 
with a long, swallow-tail coat, worn shiny at 
elbows, cuffs, and shoulder-blades ; a small, 
sharp eye, prowling within the thickets of over- 
hanging eyebrows ; and a pair of feet " done 
up " in blue woollen socks and calf-skin slip- 
pers : — these formed the several items of his 
scholastic motley. Yet he was accounted a 



268 HOMESPUN. 

wonder, in his way. Goldsmith's village 
school-master was out of hail entirely, with 
all his acquaintance with the " rules," and his 
unchallenged skill at " logic." 

As he called out the classes to their recita- 
tions in the forenoon, he had a bustling trick of 
spanking a book across his palm before begin- 
ning the exercise, and sounding up in a high 
key — " Now, then, let 's see who 's going to 
be smart to-day ' " 

The large scholars were ranged around at 
desks that lined three sides of the room ; while 
on the fourth was perched the sentry-box he 
occupied himself, in which he used to sit and 
rap with his ferule, or adroitly pitch heavy 
books at the pates of astonished offenders. 

The everlasting iron stove stood out in the 
middle of the floor, roaring as it always roars 
when over-fed, and radiating wavering columns 
of heat till very late in the afternoons. For 
their own good, the children who sat about 
that instrument might just as well have been 
crowded into its own fiery bowels, as stowed 
in that suffocating school-room. If there 
chance to be any of them on the planet yet, 1 
need not ask them if they think their early 
school-house baking has helped them to see 
their way in the world with any more clear- 



THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 269 

ness, or " do the sums " of life with any more 
readiness and rapidity. 

The little fellows on the low benches nearest 
the stove sat as still as mice in a cupboard, and 
went on industriously roasting their heads and 
shortening their lives. Sometimes, when their 
faces grew as red as pearmain apples, they 
screened them with their spelling-books, that 
were carefully covered with calico ; or, if they 
grew squirmy in the process of roasting, Mr. 
Porringer sternly rebuked them, declared, with 
a heavy stamp of his foot and in a loud voice, 
that there must be no noise^ and very often 
caught up his ferule and shook it with a frown. 
Or, again, if they timidly begged to go into 
the entry and get a drink of water from the 
pail, he seemed to take a secret delight in re- 
fusing, telling them it was all nonsense for 
them to be drinking so much water in the 
winter time. Yet he permitted himself, now 
and then, to go to the door for a snuff of fresh 
air, or to enjoy a clean and cooling drink, and 
perhaps lay in a new quid of Virginia twist 
besides. 

Thus and there did they bake and stew and 
simmer together. Boys on one side of the 
room, and girls on the other. Big boys and 
little boys, — big girls and little girls. The 



270 HOMESPUN, 

little boys looking up inquiringly at the big 
ones, to learn what might be the very newest 
tricks, — and little girls on their side watching 
the big ones, lest something worth knowing 
might escape them. Some conning their les- 
sons with an intense eagerness that would make 
one learned in less than a winter's season. 
Some with books close to their faces, whisper- 
ing and jabbering and working their jaws, as 
if they conquered their tasks by the process of 
mastication. Little boys slyly sticking pins 
through their neighbors' trousers, or pulling their 
flaxen hair where it would go straying, or chew- 
ing cuds of paper and snapping them spat 
against the ceiling, to make the girls laugh. 

Above the din rose the voice of Mr. Porrin- 
ger, — " Next ! parse Might have loved, and see 
if you can't put it in the right mood and 
tense ! '' — a matter very difficult of perform- 
ance even by learners much older than any 
who sat on those benches. A droning hum 
rising in the ears from all quarters of the room, 
like the dry heat simmering up from the stove 
in the middle of the floor. A shifting scene 
of faces, — some older and some younger, 
some scowling and some smiling, — some 
studying the lessons and some studying mis- 
chief, — yet every one intent on getting 
through at the easiest rate. 



THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 271 

And, to vary the picture ever so little, a 
broad-shouldered negro fellow sitting all by 
himself in the corner next the door, his ebony 
countenance fairly sweating fun and mischief 
at every pore. He was the *' black top " of the 
little school parish, — the fifth wheel of the 
educational coach. Over the top of his slate 
his twinkling little eyes took sly observations, 
from tiuie to time, of what was going on 
about the room, and he laughed under his 
breath at any trifling trick he saw played, 
though sometimes he could not help giving a 
rip of laughter that drew the eyes of the whole 
school round to him in an instant. Then he 
would begin innocently to spit on his slate and 
rub out his " sum," no doubt believing it rather 
an odd problem even in mixed mathematics. 

He had a queer way of lifting his entire 
scalp when he chose to elevate his eyebrows, 
which set his frizzled pelt in such comical 
motion that none of us could possibly resist it. 
Mr. Porringer's ruler was brandished at the 
little fellows pretty often, on these occasions, 
but we could not help wondering how it was 
he never seemed to see our African exemplar. 
It so happened, too, — as it very often does 
happen in such cases, — that this same negro 
was as clever a creature as any human being 



272 HOMESPUN, 

on foot, and would positively have done him- 
self wanton harm as soon as anybody else ; 
yet his shining skin being always as full of 
drollery as a fruit-rind is of juice, it was to be 
expected that it would sometimes overrun for 
others' innocent merriment. A wonderful fel- 
low he among the boys, grown man though he 
was ; and although he worked out on a farm 
in the summer, he always found time to go 
fishing with them on the rainy days, and would 
gladly be off all night, wading the low streams 
with birch-bark torches in quest of suckers and 
dace. 

Committee Day was the Ked Letter day of 
the Winter's calendar. The school presented 
itself then, for drill and review, to the eyes and 
ears of the Minister, the Deacon, and some one 
or two more of the local magnates, whose duty 
it was to make the regular inquisition of 
school-affairs, in the name and behalf of the 
town. 

Mr. Porringer used to set on foot great prep- 
arations for this event of the year, scouring 
up the little knowledge of his pupils till they 
scarcely recognized themselves in their trans- 
formation. None of us could have been more 
nervous over our expectations than he was for 
himself; and yet, the Committee out of the 



THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 273 

account, nobody could be more positive and 
despotically dogmatic about his knowledge 
than this same Mr. John Porringer. 

When this dignified body of (usually) three 
men entered, looking, as somebody ventures 
it, as " wise as saws and modern instances," 
if not a trifle more so than that even, the 
Master met them at the door ; not blandly, as 
a June morning gets in among the cherry-blos- 
soms, but stiffly, and with an empty dignity 
that originated with nothing and amounted to 
nothing. Bowing, with one hand outstretched, 
towards the Committee, he lifted the other, 
which held his book, as a signal for the school 
to rise in respect ; and the seating of that body 
again made as great confusion as the fainting 
of a lady at College Commencement. 

The classes were then called up, — all the 
way from the A, B, abs to the students in 
Arithmetic and Geography. The small fry 
were ordered to toe a crack running the length 
of the oak floor, and in that position to make 
their " manners." It was so seriously done, 
that I cannot keep back the laugh, even now, 
in recalling it. Some of the answers to ques- 
tions were given by the larger classes in a 
yell of unison, loud enough to scare every 
stray bear from the back settlements. Then, 

18 



274 HOMESPUN. 

more hickory in the stove — more roasting of 
young heads — and more internal applications 
of cold water from the dipper in the entry. 

Finally, the recitations over, there followed 
a demand from Mr. Porringer for " silence ! " 
and a second demand upon the Committee for 
" any remarks," &c. The homilies there 
spoken, I well remember, were German-text 
to us all ; we knew nothing what they meant, 
and cared nothing whatever for them. At the 
end, a prayer from the Minister, — a general 
raising of the school, — more bowing, — and a 
welcome exit through the outer door. 

And so the review was over. 

Mr. Porringer would seal up the entire par- 
cel with some little speech of his own, and 
thus it remained until visitation day came 
round again the next winter. "We were then 
let out, the padlock was fastened in the staple 
of the door, the fire in the stove went down, 
and we saw no more of Mr. Porringer till fully 
nine o'clock the next morning. 




COCK-CBOW. 

COCK-A-DOODLE-DO ! 

Where away is the morn, 

That you sound your clarion-horn? 

Not a streak of light in the east, 

Nor the faintest ray 

Of dappled gray 
Is yet to be seen, — not the least. 
Three o'clock ! — that is all ; 
And still you sound your call 
To all within the house to wake, 
And into their hearts their burdens take, 
Before ever the day is bom! 
There is not a sign of the dawn ; 
The stars are burning out, 'tis true. 
But no eyes see the day yet coming through ; 

The world is fast asleep in the dark; 

Not so much as the sound of the watch- 
dog's bark; 
And still this Cock-a-doodle-do ! 

Cock-a-doodle-c?o / 
The first rich ray of red 



276 HOMESPUN. 

Has fallen across the shed : 

And, from his perch, once more the call 

Of the warder that keeps watch for us all. 

Shrill, and clear, and high is the note 

From out that regal throat, 

Pulsing its echoes everywhere 

Through the frosty morning air, 

Down the valley clear to the mill, 

And away to the top of the nearest hill. 

The cattle get up from their long night's bed, 

And the boards of the floor creak overhead ; 

The horse looks out from his darkened stall, 

Like a lord from the door of his castle-hall ; 

Over the roof curls up the smoke 

That tells of the stir of thrifty folk ; 

The hens on their perches crowd along. 

Aroused by their lord's resounding song. 

And now the sun's clear, golden ray 

Falls through the barn-chinks on the hay; 

Into the pails full many a stream 

Of milk, that is rich with clotted cream, 

Riddles the foam in a zigzag line, 

As sweet as the breath of the yarded kine. 

Cock-a-do6dle-<:?c? / 
There he is, on the garden gate. 
Crest erect, and spirit elate ; 
The rain has been falling all the day 
And no eye now can thread its way 
To any rift or lift in the clouds 



COCK-CROW. 277 

That pack the concave in such crowds: — 

But chanticleer, he sees the sign, 

Where wisest men can read no line ; 

A prophet, with an instinct high. 

He keeps the secret of the sky, — 

A favorite child of Nature he, 

That knows the heart of her mystery. 

And at that Cock-a-doodle-do, 

And cheery flap of pinions, too, 

The household to the windows go, 

In answer to the call they know : — 

The sky grows brighter, and the blue 

Comes forth at Cock-a-doodle-do ! 

Cock-a-doodle-c?o / 

The rival he has overthrown 

Goes reeling to his roost alone ; 

And he, the royal conqueror, 

With bloody ruff about his throat, 
Sends forth his strong, defiant note 
To Chanticleers near and remote. 

On every farmer's broad barn-floor. 

No shouts from the walls of proud old Troy 

Were ever given with half the joy 

That fills the heart of this brave bird. 

As he ma-kes the news of his victory heard. 

You 'd think he was some baron bold. 

From whom the rest their tenures hold, 

Proclaiming, on the garden wall, 

His feudal watch and ward for all. 



278 HOMESPUN. 

Cock-a-doodle-c?o / 
No house is Home, without that horn 
To sound the hours, from dawn to dawn. 
Before the eye rise curling smokes, 
That come from fires of country folks, — 
A stack of roofs, — a low, wide door, — 
The thump of flails on a big barn-floor,-^ 
A tented field of corn hard by, 
About whose stacks great pumpkins lie, — 
Hens' nests snug hidden in the hay. 
And children hunting half the day, — 
A garden filled with fruits and flowers, 
Where birds make musical the hours, — 
Good cheer, warm welcomes, and bright fires, 
That fill the wishing heart's desires. 
Oh, Chanticleer ! — brave Chanticleer ! 

Thy voice rings through all History ; 

Outstarting from the mystery 
Of Indian jungles, dark and drear. 
Thy path has lain through Greece and Eome 
To the door of every farmer's home ; 
TJiey stamped thee on their ancient coins. 

And offered thee in sacrifice 

Unto their heathen deities, 
That sprung from my thologic loins : 
And " Plato's man " thou wert, we know, 
Above two thousand years ago ; 
And Peter felt his shameful lie 
Reproved by thy shrill, chiding cry, 
And went out, weeping bitterly. 



COCK-CROW. 279 

Thy note sends every ghost to bed. 
Afraid to show its guilty head 
When the shadows of the night have sped. 
They set thee on the tallest spires, 
Above the fog of earth's desires, 
A sort of lookout in the sky, 
Interpreter of wet and dry, 
And cheering souls to victory. 

Thy Cock-a-doodle-do, it rings 

Through Winters, Autumns, Summers, Springs; 

At every hearth, in every heart, 

The tenderest feelings take a start : 

Thou mayst not be the bird of Jove, — 

Thou art a bird that all men love : 

There is no fowl that walks, the peer 

Of strutting, crowing Chanticleer ! 



BOOK THIRD, 



BUCOLICS. 



" Let me he no assistant for a State, 
But Jceep a Farm and Carters." 

Shakspeaee — " Hamlet." 



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^ D^r'^Sf WOBK ON THE FABM. 

A WELL-ORDERED farm is a little 
republic, having its President and its 
Ministers of State. Every day brings its du- 
ties, recurring with the rising and setting of 
the sun. Matters do not go on by a bell, as in 
a rattling factory town ; but they come round 
in as unbroken an order, describing as perfect 
a circle, and representing as momentous inter- 
ests. 

At three o'olock in the morning, Cock- 
crow. The feathered lord's perch is in the 
basement of the barn, and his clarion sounds 
muffled and distant. A second, awaiting 
but this well-known signal from his elder, 
erects himself proudly beside his dames and 
sounds a lustier note, with a strain of defiance 
in it. Then a third, and a fourth ; and pres- 
ently every cock that has sway over a harem 
in the country neighborhood sends forth his 
shrill token of the coming of the morn. They 
call, one to the other, from farm to farm, and 



284 HOMESPUN. 

from hill-side to valley. The still air suddenly 
becomes alive. Every barn -yard gives cheery 
welcome to the breaking day. The house- 
holds, far and wide, awake, and know that the 
gates of the day are soon to be opened wide. 

The farmer who pretends to be a farmer 
indeed, dresses and calls his help ; while the 
housewife is pottering over pans and kettles 
in the kitchen, making ready to roast and fry, 
stew and bake, in the big fireplace where so 
many rows of pot-hooks hang from the crane. 
The men trudge off, half awake, to the cow- 
yard, and the milk is soon churning into the 
foaming pails between their knees. About the 
door troop old hens with chickens in charge, 
clucking and scratching as busily as if the 
whole summer-day were not before them, and 
no bugs and flies out of bed, either. The cat 
goes purring around the kitchen and the door- 
step, rubbing herself affectionately against one 
and another, and tendering expressions of her 
joy at seeing the family about once more. 

When the hired men and boys have soused 
their heads in the freshly drawn water that 
stands on the bench outside, and the milking 
is done, they go to the sheds and barns and 
out-buildings to get ready the tools with which 
their day's work is to be accomplished. 



A DATS WORK ON THE FARM. 285 

Whether it be over carts and chains and har- 
rows and ploughs, or scythes and cradles and 
rakes and wagons, the yard is, for some little 
time, a scene of life and bustling activity. 

All this while, too, preparations are making 
in the house for breakfast ; and when it is 
finally announced, and the feet of hungry men 
have been scraped at the door, the work at the 
board suggests nothing so much as the work 
in the fields afterwards. The eating is not 
minced, if the meat is. Every dish has a rel- 
ish of its own. A piece of cold meat is a 
piece of cold meat, to be eaten without mis- 
givings of dyspepsia and indigestion. Simple 
as the table is, it is loaded with the fat of the 
land. Who that knows new milk and fresh 
cream, yellow butter or new-laid eggs, but 
takes in the picture with a single recollection ? 

If it be Spring-time, — when buds are burst- 
ing, and leaves expanding to the sun, and 
steamy smokes are working up from valley 
and hill-side, and calves are bleating from the 
yard for mothers that call them from the pas- 
tures, and life sparkles again in the running 
brooks, and waters glisten in little pools all 
about the lowlands, — the man of the hard 
hands, but soft heart, is turning up the sod 
with the gleaming share, his boy astride the 



286 HOMESPUN. 

old plough-horse, while he " gees" and " haws" 
the yoke of cattle himself ; or, in other fields, 
sowing his grain with the hand of faith, and 
walking his acres in the spirit of a lord. 

Then the bustle is in the barns, the sheds, 
the corn-cribs, and the cellars, where they sort 
their seeds, prepare the corn with plaster for 
planting, and slice baskets of potatoes, for 
burial in the hills. Horses are hitched into 
this and into that ; cattle straggle over the 
yard, rattling their yoke-rings ; wagons are 
rolled out, and others dragged in ; the turkeys 
are stealing off to find places for nests ; and 
hens are cackling over the egg apiece they 
have hidden away with such pains on the 
barn scaffolds. Withal, the sun glows warm 
and cheerful, and the heart expands and be- 
comes more genial in the influence of its pene- 
trating heat. 

All day long they plough and harrow and 
drop seeds, and cover with the hoe. The boys 
are very tired before night falls, and come 
pretty near falling asleep w^hile they wash 
their feet out the door at evening. Little 
enough money goes toward candles after sup- 
per, for all hands are glad enough to go off to 
bed pretty soon after their day's work is over. 
And the whole house shortly becomes silent 



A DATS WORK ON THE FARM. 287 

again, — the silver moon, perhaps, throwing 
over its spreading roof a silent blessing. 

Or, in the Autumn, the days are just 

as full of activity and life. Harvesting has 
•somewhat of sentiment in it. A man cannot 
walk among the spires of his rustling corn, or 
pile the yellow pumpkins in his creaking wain, 
or stand out solitary and alone in the glorious 
landscape, looking dreamily on the bewildering 
colors of distant woods and forests, without 
feeling his heart fill, and at times even his eyes 
overflow. 

The corn goes into the cribs, slender and 
golden. The apples are rolled away in bar- 
rels, or emptied into bins for early using. The 
potatoes are digged and carried off to the cel- 
lars. Stalks are stacked in spare places about 
the barns and sheds, and the bouncing pump- 
kins are rolled all over the barn-floor. Then 
every space is fiJled ; the harvest has been 
abundant, and the granaries are ready to burst 
with the superfluity. The cattle begin to 
come in from the pastures, and stand grouped 
near the bars, idly butting one another with 
their horns. 

There is no -telling how long the fine weather 
is to last, nor how soon the dull fall rains and 
blustering snows may be upon them ; therefore 



288 HOMESPUN. 

the farmer holds steadily to his work from 
morning till night, — going and coming, filling 
and emptying continually. Now he can see 
the delightful fruits of his summer's labor. He 
finds that his returns are enriching him, and 
that poverty and want are exiled from his 
hearth, at least during the coming winter. 

In the haying season, which every one 

knows to be the hardest of the year, the 
women clear the breakfast-table as soon as the 
meal is over, wash up the dishes, and hurry to 
finish their tasks at the churn or cheese-tub. 
Or, taking time by the forelock, they go about 
getting dinner, — no sentimental task, where 
there are from six to a dozen hungry haymak- 
ers to be fed. So into the garden they go for 
the vegetables, — cabbages, peas, beets, early 
beans, and whatever else offers to their dex- 
trous hands. Having digged the potatoes, the 
boys are off in the field with the mowers. 

By-and-by, pots are boiling, and the fire is 
crackling ; the kitchen is as hot as roast, and 
the good wife's face glows with the burnish of 
a ripe tomato. . The daughters are at the sink, 
or going here and there to save steps for their 
mother. By the middle of the. forenoon, the 
boys come in to carry luncheon to the hay- 
makers, packed in a great market-basket, — 



A DATS WORK ON THE FARM. 289 

bread-and-butter, cheese, cold meats, and ap- 
ple pies. In a pail, or a stone pitcher, is the 
sweetened water, black with syruppy richness, 
and flecked all over its surface with little float- 
ing islands of ginger. 

They all go off* together, in the morning, 
down the road, or the lane, till they come to 
the bars through which they are to turn in. 
It is not long before they have swung their 
scythes and taken their positions ; and you 
can catch the hoarse ring of their blades as 
they go rasping and cutting through the waist- 
high grass. It is done as by magic. The 
face of the whole field is changed in a few 
hours. The grass lies heavy and wet in the 
swathes, and men and boys are spreading it, 
with pitchforks and rake-handles, in the scorch- 
ing sun. At intervals you can hear the noise 
of the rifling of the scythes, sounding in the 
distance like a strain of music in the airs of 
the July morning ; musical, because so in har- 
mony with the scene and the season. 

The morning being well spent, the workers 
withdraw beneath some spreading tree, — a 
maple, or a young hickory, or, perchance, an 
ancient meadow elm, — and there on the clean, 
sweet grass eat and drink their forenoon fill, 
not unmindful of the coming dinner and the 

19 



290 HOMESPUN. 

nooning spell. The basket is well rummaged 
and lightened ; the stone pitcher passes from 
hand to hand, every long draught lowering the 
sweet tide till little is left but the ridges of gin- 
ger that have been stranded on its throat and 
sides. A few jokes — a little laughter — a 
passage of half-play with the boys as they 
stretch themselves on the grass, — and work is 
resumed again. 

From that time until the dinner-horn sounds, 
no tented field, whether of tourney or military 
encampment, ever furnished a busier or more 
picturesque spectacle. The sun flames high 
overhead, pouring down almost perpendicularly 
its fervid streams. Lines of heat dance and 
waver as far as the eye can reach across the 
slopes and plain, and seem to open wider the 
million pores as you regard their dizzy motion* 

When the horn blows, the men stack their 
implements of husbandry in the nearest shade, 
and go home in the wagons, or straggling back 
up the lane, a wearier phalanx than when they 
came forth in the dewy morning. They have 
done much work in those few hours, and done 
it well. 

The " women-folks " have got through their 
steaming forenoon labors over the dinner, and 
now stand ready to wait on the hearty fellows 



A DATS WORK ON THE FARM. 291 

who are returned to test the bounty and qual- 
ity of their culinary skill. Having drawn up 
to the board, the laborers find the meats al- 
ready carved, and fall to with a relish such 
as no dainty appetite ever found in the bottom 
of a bitters-bottle. 

All sorts of vegetables, smoking hot; pork, 
in solid fat cuts, right out of the deep sound- 
ings of the barrel ; beef, red and ripe, and 
richly streaked with fat from end to end ; white 
bread and brown, in piles like barricades ; and 
puddings or pies, as it may chance, — together 
with such other garnish as is to be found in 
true state on no tables but those of the lords 
of the land. The whole board is a parterre of 
steams, and smokes, and fragrance ! The ap- 
petizing fumes of meat and vegetables steal 
through doors and windows, and persist in 
finding their way even into the " best room " 
of all in the house. 

These rugged, robust mowers eat very much 
as they go about their other work ; and as 
soon as they have swallowed their last mouth- 
ful, and washed their throats with the last 
draught of cold water, they push back noisily 
in their chairs, wipe their mouths with their 
sleeves, and catch a long breath, as of regret, 
to recover. 



292 HOMESPUN. 

The table has been cleared as by some pro- 
cess of magic. The pies — they have been 
whittled in pieces. The board is but a wreck 
of fragments, — disjecta membra of the noon- 
day feast, — which they turn their backs upon 
as soon as they have been surfeited, going out 
to sit upon the logs before the door, or to lie 
down for a little upon the sun-checkered grass. 

By afternoon, the hay requires turning ; oft- 
ener before. In the latter case, it is raked into 
windrows pretty soon after dinner, and got 
ready either to be cocked or carried in, load by 
load. 

When the pitching, and loading, and " rak- 
ing after " is ready to be done, the field pre- 
sents a sight even more full of life than during 
the morning. This they all consider — the 
boys in particular — the very j oiliest part of 
the day ; for now the hands are close enough 
in company to tell their old country stories 
over again, and pass about their smoky jokes. 
And, by the help of such stimulus, the big, 
round loads of sweet hay go off out of the 
field, one by one, and all are carefully " mowed 
away " for winter's use beneath the broad barn 
roof. 

With still another wash and thorough face- 
scrubbing at the bench without the back door, 



A DAY'S WORK ON THE FARM. 293 

they all pass in to supper. It is ready for 
them at sundown, and has cost but little time 
in its preparation. The women have been 
sewing and chatting through the afternoon, 
sitting in a clean, cool room, and quite as busy 
at their work as were the " men folks " at 
theirs. 

Though the supper is frugal and plain, it is 
ample and good. They come to it with a 
relish. Meat for the third — fourth time dur- 
ing the day. Such as prefer milk may dip it 
from a large pan for themselves, and eat the 
crumbled and sopped bread out of it till they 
are full. After supper, the milking of the 
cows, already yarded ; then a short stroll about 
the premises through the hushed twilight hour ; 
and finally, tired and fagged, to welcome beds 
under the roof. If any men do indeed enjoy 
sleep, they are the haymakers. It comes sweet 
and undisturbed to their heavy lids, with no 
nightmares to make sounding rapids in its 
placid current. 

A day's work on a farm, at any season 

in the year, is no " gentleman's " work at all, 
but the hardest that can be done. Mechanical 
inventions are, to be sure, doing much to re- 
lieve the husbandman ; yet no such go-be- 
tweens can remove the care, and anxiety, and 



294 



HOMESPUN. 



personal labor of it all ; and no man knows of 
what he talks, when he thinks to go about 
farming as he would go off to fish, — lazily, 
and brimming over with sentiment and 
dreams. 




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FABMEBS' WIVES, 

IN this country, the wife of the farmer stands 
at the head of society. She may not know 
it, yet it is' gospel truth. Beginning back with 
the foundation, or elements, of our social sys- 
tem, we find that she is at the bottom of all 
the bold and brave enterprises that have made 
us great, and has sustained the burden and 
heat of the whole day in our national growth 
and advancement. And it is because she 
has had the making of the 7nen, training and 
moulding them from the very gristle of boy- 
hood. 

She has carried the entire fabric in her 
heart ; since upon her have our heroes relied, 
and to her looked for the sweetest approbation. 
The wives of the farmers were the real Women 
of the Revolution, of whom never can too 
much be said in praise. Little or nothing 
could have been done without their aid. 

The wife, in the country, is the one being 
who can make the homestead beautiful. She 



296 HOMESPUN. 

calls into it the atmosphere of genuine love. 
She is the single and powerful magnet, by 
which husband and children are attracted 
there. She can make all things bright and 
lovely, — or she can bring down cloudiness 
and gloom, put everybody in the sulks, and 
set the whole household to wishing they were 
established somewhere else. 

A woman can do as much as that, with 
great ease, anywhere ; but in a home in the 
country, she has full and peculiar power. It is 
not so easy to get away from a home in the 
seclusion of rustic life, that is notoriously un- 
comfortable ; but in the changing crowd of a 
large city, it is a very different matter. 

Farmers' wives are scarcely aware of their 
influence ; if they were, they might at times 
employ it to better immediate purpose. They 
practically underrate themselves, to begin with. 
They run to one extreme, and consider them- 
selves of no consequence in the world at all ; 
and then they run to the other, and insist that 
they are just as good as anybody else. Which, 
of course, they are. A little brush — the least 
in the world — of city influence, and they are 
all in a flutter ; instantly they are ready to for- 
get the beauty and the endearing associations 
of their country home-life, and to make them- 



FARMERS' WIVES. 297 

selves unhappy with envy of their city cousins' 
flounces and fanfaronade. The calm, contem- 
plative, truly religious existence they enjoy in 
the heart of Nature, they undervalue at all 
points, and are ready to exchange it for the 
daily view of stony streets, the daily -sounds of 
rattling vehicles, and the almost positive cer- 
tainty of never again seeing the sun either rise 
or set. 

But there is a reason for much of this 

unsettled feeling of hers. In the country, 
woman is made too much a mere drudge. It 
may sound all very romantic and sweet to 
your ears, dear madam, to hear the talk of the 
Arcadian life such a sister must lead, away 
from large towns and their frivolous influen- 
ces, — but it is not such a life as you allow 
your imagination to dish up before you. Think 
what it is for a woman — a wife — to milk cows, 
to suckle calves, and sometimes to feed the 
pigs ; to attend regularly on the ducks and chick- 
ens, besides performing various other chores not 
altogether in harmony with her feminine na- 
ture. Then, again, the same tasks — always 
hard — follow one another in a continuous 
round from morning till night, one day upon 
another ; and she must be different from the 
rest of her sex, who can help offering silent 



298 HOMESPUN. 

thanksgiving when God draws the curtain of 
night for the world to lay its head on its pillow 
and go to sleep. . 

The English country ladies — we have all 
heard about them ; about their fresh robust- 
ness, their rosy health, and their overflow of 
animal^ spirits. We wish one half as good 
news could be told of the country ladies of 
America, with their anxious, care-worn counte- 
nances, as if all the interests of the farm de- 
volved — as they often do — upon themselves. 
In a good many cases they are a deal 
" smarter " than the men, and take the man- 
agement out of their hands. They can reckon 
you up the cost and value of a hog, or a 
" critter," without even going near the slate 
that hangs inside the pantry ; whereas their 
husbands would be studying, like industri- 
ous Champollions, all the sundry chalk-marks 
about the house and shed, in hopes of getting 
at what they wanted. If many of our farmers 
are asked by a travelling drover vi^hat they will 
take for such or such a " beef critter," they 
will show in a moment their disinclination (if 
not their inability) to sell, without first con- 
sulting " mother. ^^ 

In this, among other ways, the woman in 
the country becomes gradually unfeminine, — 



FARMERS' WIVES. 299 

loses a certain degree of that bloomy freshness 
which so charmingly sets off female character, 
— mixes in with the roughness, and hardness, 
and drudgery, and even the dirt of farm-work 
and farm-life, and, in the lapse of time, uncon- 
sciously parts with some of those attractive 
qualities which should be found as elements in 
the character of every lovable female. 

But to describe, rather than venture on the 
essayist's ground : — Most farmers' wives are 
up last at night and earliest in the morning. 
And although it is no decent man, fit to call 
himself an American farmer, who would let 
his wife rise first and make the fires of a win- 
ter's morning, yet she is both ambitious and 
thrifty enough to be in the kitchen very soon 
after he is, — bustling about the sink, the pots, 
the kettles, and the table, making the usual 
breakfast preparations, and arranging generally 
for the progress of the day's work. You never 
catch her idle. She moves twice as quick as 
her husband, and accomplishes twice as much 
in the same time. 

Breakfast over, the day's operations begin. 
Every day is much like every other day in the 
same season. The milk is to be scalded ; but- 
ter is to be churned ; dishes are to be washed, 
and pots and kettles, tables and trays to be 



300 HOMESPUN. 

scoured ; in the season, the young chicks are 
to be looked after ; the children must have their 
faces washed, and be sent to school ; luncheon 
must not be forgotten for the workmen in the 
field ; dinner must be hurried into the pot or 
oven ; the table is to be set again ; then it is to 
be cleared off; then the sewing must be done; 
or company rides up to the door ; and the little 
chicks come in once more for their share of 
daily attention ; and the children hurry home 
from school, as hungry as young bear cubs ; 
and the table must be set for tea ; and the cows 
must be milked as soon as they come up to the 
yard ; and the business of the day must be 
freely talked over with husband, as well as the 
plans for the morrow ; and the little ones are 
to be got off to bed ; — and then night comes 
down for good again upon the whole house- 
hold. 

This is the quintessence of routine. Little 
or nothing interposes to break its dull monot- 
ony. Unless the interior resources are rich and 
ample, the life lapses, in spite of one's self, into 
formal, ancient, and plodding practices, and 
rarely does a living jet of fresh experience 
enter in. 

In winter-time it seems harder for the good- 
wife still, for then the days are — oh ! so long ; 



FARMERS' WIVES. 301 

shortest of all though we know them to be at 
the coming of the winter solstice. The mo- 
notony for the spirits is like the stretching fields 
of snow to the eyes, — reaching afar in the 
bleak distance, without a sign of boundary or 
neighborhood. Well might the wives of farm- 
ers keep long sticks hanging in their chimney- 
corners on which to notch off these weary days 
with their pale sunshine, as they slowly pass. 

The wintry mornings dawn late, with nip- 
ping airs, and often with leaden clouds lying 
in long bars just above the horizon. The win- 
dows are covered with all sorts of devices in 
frost-work, and breaths blow out from all 
mouths in volumes of steam. If a fresh snow 
has fallen during the night, the whole world 
looks so still, so thoroughly hushed, and so 
completely buried up, that the snapping and 
crackling of the kindlings on the logs scarcely 
breaks the solemn silence of the time. Then, 
whether fingers ache with the cold or not, 
breakfast is to be made ready for the house- 
hold, — often with but a single pair of hands 
at that. The girls should be up, and they 
can be of some help ; but I do not incline to 
believe they are always up ; — their huge, puffy 
feather-beds are thoroughly warmed, and the 
rosy creatures do hate awfully to climb out of 



302 HOMESPUN. 

them early in the morning, on the icy cold 
floor. Now and then the boys take a hand at 
chopping the minced meat, or help peel the 
smoking-hot potatoes, with long checked aprons 
tied close under their chins. 

It is eight o'clock — nine o'clock — and 
even ten o'clock, sometimes, before the family 
work is fairly set in motion ; and then, when 
steams float all around the blackened ceiling 
of the kitchen, and the savors of stewing pump- 
kins rise from the hardly covered mouth of the 
great kettle, — perhaps there are sausages to 
fill, or pork to pack away in the barrel, or 
cheeses to finish making, or butter to churn, 
or some other such labors to be attended to, 
any one of which is sufficient to tax the ener- 
gies of a heroic and industrious woman. 

The " men folks " may be off at work in the 
woods, dragging logs and chopping ; but they 
realize little of the multiplying cares and per- 
plexities that are sown, thick as thistle-seed, 
around the steps of the farmer's wife, every 
day. Indeed, it is a great deal more true than 
one generally thinks, that if a farmer, capable 
and thrifty himself, gets a slovenly, behindhand, 
incompetent helpmeet, nothing under the stars 
will save his farm from slowly cankering away 
under the application of mortgages. It is the 



FARMERS' WIVES. 303 

wife who is the farmer's real support, after all. 
She either makes or unmakes. It is nothing 
to the point that he manages to drive good 
bargains with cattle, horses, muttons, and field 
products, unless she who sits at home, and 
weaves the web of his fortunes for him, sec- 
onds with earnestness and industry all his plans 
and purposes : — he does but draw water for 
himself in sieves, instead of buckets. 

Thus the farmer's wife stands first in impor- 
tance in our agricultural matters; and every- 
body knows full well that agriculture is the 
only base and bottom of civilized society. 

Then, in the family group, she shapes, colors, 
and directs everything. The youthful character 
is in her hands altogether. Whether by an as- 
sumed or a conceded authority, she is the head 
and front of the family. She is the heart of 
the household, if she is not the head as well. 
She not only bakes and brews, but she trains 
boys and girls in those simple, temperate, and 
oftentimes Spartan habits, which subsequently 
project themselves with the force of a new in- 
dividuality upon the destinies of the outside 
world. 

This is the province of the farmer's wife, — 
no more, and no less. It does not fall to her 
lot to do nothing but make butter and cheese, 



304 HOMESPUN. 

knit stockings and spin wool, away off in the 
country solitudes ; but she is scattering about 
her, every day of her life, the seeds of a grain 
whose products are not for a day, but for all 
time. If only she saw it so for herself, what a 
change it would work in her tasks and her lot ! 
How fresh her resolution would become, — 
how perpetually revived and renewed her pur- 
poses! Instead of bewailing her hard fortune, 
off in such monotonous and dismal retirements, 
she would rather seem, in her own eyes, to sit 
like a queen at the heart of Nature, silently 
guiding and fashioning the forces that are cer- 
tain, in good time, to control the whole social 
system. 

" Drudgery ! everlasting drudgery ! " — 

so the country wives exclaim continually. Nor 
can it exactly be wondered at, either. Still, 
there is something beside drudgery in it, to 
one who knows how and is determined to 
ennoble herself, and exalt her occupation. Life, 
we agree, is chiefly made up of little things; 
but even these may be lifted up by the soul of 
love, and made glorious. 

But the husband and head is as much at 
fault as anybody else. He insists, dogmatic- 
ally ; he exacts ; he lays on the heavy burdens ; 
he sometimes even tyrannizes ; — he is the sin- 



FARMERS' WIVES. 805 

gle dead weight upon the frail shoulders of the 
woman. It is not to be gainsay ed or explained 
away, — he shuffles off too much of the coarse 
labor upon her, consenting to make her the 
packhorse of the family establishment, the real 
beast of burden in all his domestic and farming 
plans. Out of it come, of course, low spirits, 
an overworked constitution, total indifference 
to the high ends and aims of life, and a gradual 
and almost entire loss of the true spiritual fac- 
ulty. 

Such should be the case no longer. 

The wife should stand, everywhere, for what 
is pure and sweet, for what is innocent and 
holy ; not one whit less so in country than in 
town ; nay, even more so in those delightful 
rural retreats, and amid those untainted influ- 
ences which God sends, like delicious fragrance, 
to keep sweet the atmosphere wherein the hu- 
man soul is obliged for a time to dwell. 

Especially is it idle to speak in disparage- 
ment of the farmer's wife. Her city sister can 
display her silks, her carriage, and her list of 
" friends ; " but what are they all, in the light 
of that sincere simplicity, that serene beauty 
of life, in which the country wife is privileged 
to dwell and rejoice all her days ? 

20 




FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 



GOD bless them, every one ! 
It is an involuntary exclamation, — but 
what of that? Is it not, therefore, the sincerer 
speech of the heart? 

The rosy creatures, buxom and clear of com- 
plexion, — their souls in their eyes and their 
hearts in their hands. — robust and bouncing, 
— vigorous and hearty — overflowing with life, 
and health, and genuine beauty ! You, my 
pretty town cousin, may pout " coarse ! " 
about them ; but that is only a conventional 
word ; it does n't mean the same thing in any 
two places. But there are some few things 
about them which we do like ; — they are sim- 
ple, and timid, and thoroughly natural. Bet- 
ter, a thousand times, for the hopes of the 
world, that the mothers of the coming genera- 
tions be awkward with their stores of health, 
than so very fine, sentimental, and dawdling. 
The boys and girls who have not yet opened 
their bright eyes on the day, will live to give 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 307 

thanks to the country girls of the present gen- 
eration for their priceless inheritance of physical 
robustness and activity. The gigantic projects 
of the coming years will owe their final suc- 
cess to the stout constitutions and high spirits 
which the maidens of our day are capable of 
transmitting. 

You can find them back fi-om the towns 
and cities to-day ; on solitary cross-roads ; in 
low-roofed houses, a mile or more apart; on 
large farms, superintending the dairy, the 
kitchen, or the poultry department; girls not 
put out to a term of hard service exactly, nor 
yet kept in for a similar purpose ; but quietly 
and happily attending to domestic duties in a 
domestic way ; contented, in that contentment 
furnishes bliss of the serenest sort ; trustful 
with their affections ; disposed to look on the 
bright side of things ; full of song to over- 
flowing, from morning till night ; with red 
cheeks in summer and winter alike ; attached, 
with a sort of devotion, to home and all its 
endearing associations ; and, all things consid- 
ered, the brightest beauties that illuminate the 
pathway of parents and the neighborhood. 

Such are our farmers' daughters, — the best 
of them. They are not all, or altogether, after 
this picture ; yet the exceptions are by no means 



808 HOMESPUN. 

to be found so much fault with. Those sam- 
ples which we have made rapid studies of, — 
as you can find them all through our Northern 
States, and New England especially, — are 
really models of their sex. Perhaps a trifle 
too timid ; perhaps not quite at ease in all 
kinds of society ; perhaps unaware, too, of the 
fresh and innocent beauty that breathes and 
speaks from face and form ; — stilly as the town 
is driven to make regular drafts on the country 
for its men, so is it obliged, and so will it al- 
ways be obliged, to go back through the same 
green lanes, and over the same grassy fields, 
and into the same brown houses, for its 
mothers for the generations that are yet to 
come. We cannot rejoice too much that it 
is so. 

But it ought to be stated that a farm- 
er's girl in these days is not what a farmer's 
girl used to be. Once, she was tied down to 
paring apples and slicing them for the string, 
to spinning flax and wool, to indiscriminate 
scullery labors, and to work which is now 
thought not in all cases the very easiest or 
best for her. Now, the spinning is not per- 
formed in the farmer's kitchen, the apples are 
pared and cored by machinery, the hard work 
is carried off" by the hired " help," and a general 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 309 

spirit of refinement is slowly working its way 
in. One readily detects it in the changed look 
of the door-yards. It smiles forth a confession 
in the gay masses of flowers that are tended 
with such care during the warm season. It 
betrays itself in the disposition to read more, 
to be less timid and shy, to establish something 
like a truly social state and neighborhood, and 
to court those graces which, always and every- 
where, imply a generous culture on the part 
of those who give them attention. 

And, just in this place, it is impossible 

to keep out of mind the influence which one 
graceful, beautiful, and pure-minded woman 
exerts in a home in the country. There could 
he no home, without her presence. No desert 
land could be more utterly desolate. She 
throws around the dwelling whatever silent, 
but eloquent, charms belong to her individual 
character. From her person itself radiates an 
atmosphere that seems to make of all things a 
heaven. By her look, — by her smile alone, 
she is able to light up any spot, and diffuse 
cheerfulness where man, by himself, would be 
but a melancholy hermit. Where she lives, 
roses blow in the earliest summer, and greenest 
grass creeps to the very door. The buttercups 
and dandelions inframe her dwelling with a 



810 HOMESPUN. 

border of gold, as if the very earth at her feet 
were a mine of yellow wealth for her. Chil- 
dren's footsteps patter where she goes, and 
merry voices are to be heard on every hand. 
Life accompanies her, surrounds her, and fol- 
lows in her train. Beauty walks in her path.' 
Happiness hovers about her presence, and there 
is hope, and rest, and peace only where she is. 

A thriving farmer of these times is 

ambitious to give his daughters all the advan- 
tages he can secure for them ; so he consults 
friends and the passing catalogues, and resolves 
on sending them to as good schools as are to 
be found for the hunting. But every mother's 
daughter of them knows how to make and 
bake bread, before she goes. And as soon as 
their term of "schooling" is over, and they 
have taken a little time to recruit their strength 
by a reasonable respite at the old homestead, 
they are competent to take charge of all the 
incipient households to which they are, gener- 
ally, soon after called. 

But not all have the luck — good or bad — to 
go away to school. What they get, by way of 
" education," they get near home, in their own 
district, and then set up for teachers themselves, 
during the summer months, under the auspices 
of very dignified School Committees. They 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 311 

go through the sing-song routine of teaching 
little ones how to read and spell, — perhaps 
they instruct the girls in plain sewing like- 
wise, — and afterwards subside into the occu- 
pation of active assistants in their own respect- 
ive households. 

Sometimes they are indispensable at home ; 
in which case they are held fast by the button 
of affection, and by sundry other inducements 
of their parents. Very soon they are installed 
mistresses in their own native homes, and 
maintain their position in spite of even the 
most determined efforts of admirers to entice 
them away. Very many such we used to 
know, who, with sacred devotion to mother 
and father, have consented to forego all their 
ambition, — world -wise, — and consecrated 
their lives to the comfort and stay of the 
hearts of their parents. Beautiful pictures of 
the true filial duty ! Yet such examples are 
not so many as to be found without some in- 
dustrious looking. 

We wish, from our hearts, that all the farm- 
ers' girls could have the advantages they so 
much desire, and equally deserve. Some of 
them are mere stay-at-homes in the quiet old 
brown houses, and look out over the green 
grass, or the white snow-drifts, longing and 



312 HOMESPUN. ' 

longing to see somewhat of that great world 

— so restless, too ! — which lies beyond. They 
are true to their daily engagements in the 
kitchen ; they wash, and iron, and help in the 
dairy, and sew ; they make beds, wash floors, 
set things to rights, run to the windows when- 
ever strangers travel the road, and make up — 
first and last — the life and light of the house- 
hold. When you take your brief summer ex- 
cursion into the country, you will see them 
standing in the doors, or feeding the poultry in 
the back-yard, perchance hanging out the wash- 
ing on the line, with sprawling sun-bonnets on 

— rosy, robust, and charming. Their faces 
confess health, and their forms faultlessness. 

Just under the hill-side yonder, now, there are 
three young girls beneath the shelter of the 
same roof. The farmer himself will give you 
warm welcome, and, with a knowing and 
humorous nod, tell you that the woman across 
the supper-table, with the long apron on, is his 
wife. Then walk in Jane, and Lucy, and Bet- 
sey ; you see they stick to the old-fashioned 
names. They drop a timid courtesy, fall to 
fussing over their collars and wristbands, and 
run about the room to make you — and them- 
selves, too — ^ more comfortable. 

Or, if it happens to be before supper, and 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 313 

perhaps a winter's evening too, you sit waiting 
in the chimney-corner, until the table is spread 
and ready. In that interval, you have a fine 
chance to see how the domestic arrangements 
work. You get an inkling of the family disci- 
pline, and find out on the spot what farmers' 
daughters are good for. Jane " draws " the 
tea ; Lucy hunts out the mince-pies, slices the 
bread, keeps the cat from mischief about the 
hearth, and has a corner of her twinkling eye 
for the new guest ; while Betsey takes care of 
the younger children, watches to see that the 
bread does not burn before the fire, runs here 
and there as her mother calls, and keeps an eye 
on the stranger, as well as her sister. And these 
three buxom rustic Graces form a truly beau- 
tiful household picture. Father sits back in 
his corner chair, regarding the girls with secret 
delight ; and mother bustles about, not forget- 
ting to throw an occasional eye to the stranger 
herself. 

The girls are up betimes in the morning, 
with a window wide open and a bed soon 
made ; and in the summer mornings you will 
see them everywhere around and within the 
house. Sometimes up at the barn-yard milk 
ing a favorite cow, — or throwing corn to the 
ducks, geese, and turkeys, — or stuffing dough 



314 HOMESPUN. 

down the gaping throats of downy chickens. 
They are gay creatures then, — romping hoy- 
dens, with cheeks like June roses, and arms 
bared to sun and air. It would be no such 
hard work to fall straight in love with them. 

If cheese is making, they have hands to dip 
into the crumbling curd ; or if butter, their fair 
arms are kneading out the buttermilk from the 
golden mass as deeply as they can thrust them 
in. Of good, substantial housekeeping, they 
know just all that is worth knowing, from start- 
ing a fire in a frosty morning to basting a 
goose and bringing it in proper trim to table. 
None are more thoroughly " up " to all the es- 
sential tricks of living. Even when they pour 
the milk from the pitcher, as you sit over 
against them at the table, it looks and sounds 
as it does not anywhere else ; your lips instinct- 
ively water for a tumbler-full before it is set 
down again ; and ever after, when you think 
of fresh country milk and cream, it is along 
with country maids, fair arms, and ruddy faces. 

It is at the Singing School where our buxom 
country girl finds her future husband. Nothing 
is doing, in their estimation, unless brisk spark- 
ing is going on ; and it is the long winters, 
with their sociable evenings, that do the mis- 
chief. Then it is that Lucy gets a beau home 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 315 

rather regularly, and her not-so-fortunate sis- 
ters of course laugh at her. Afterwards, if her 
" feller " feels inclined to turn it into serious 
business, he opens with a course of carefully 
timed visits, varying both in length and fre- 
quency, from once every two weeks to twice 
every one week. Sunday offers the peculiarly 
favored evening, which, in the country, seems 
to be sacred to courtship. Many and many a 
Sunday night have I seen a single lone candle 
burning in this house and that, at an hour 
when none but honest travellers and legitimate 
lovers had any moral or natural right to be out 
on the road. 

The " best room " of the farmer's house is 
open then, though both sunshine and fire-light 
be kept out through the rest of the week. 
Passing by leisurely and a little scrutinizingly, 
one might distinctly make out a head — per- 
haps a close pair of them — firmly set on a 
pair of good shoulders, across the paper win- 
dow-shade, which a single glance tells him be- 
longs to some well-known young farmer-fellow 
who lives not over two miles off. Besides, there 
is a tired horse that stands patient and solitary 
before the gate-posts, perhaps with a big checked 
blanket sprawled over his frame, and his head 
dropping down between his knees in drowsy 
meditation on this sort of service. 



316 HOMESPUN. 

In time, courtship leads to marriage ; it 
generally does. This event, in the family, is 
the cap-sheaf of all others. For its sake, the 
household willingly consents to be turned 
topsy-turvy. Or, if it is resolved to be as 
secret as possible with the affair, it is wonder- 
ful what a sight of pains is taken to bruit it 
about. These little secrets are the best known 
of all sorts of news. Any goose could guess 
in a minute that preparations for a wedding 
were going on. 

And a Country Wedding — let me tell you, 
my dear friend — is something to wish to live 
to be present at. No make-believe about it ; 
but a hearty affair, to which, when you go, you 
wish with untold regrets that you could have 
stayed a good while longer. It is not so much 
the event itself, as it is the ceremonial adjuncts 
in the way of fun and frolic, that makes the 
time pass so lightly ; all the imaginary delights 
of Mahomet's paradise pale before the substan- 
tial pleasures of a wedding at the old home- 
stead. There is a vast deal of kissing done at 
this particular time, as if some contagion had 
broken out just as soon as the minister had so 
solemnly tied the knot and taken his fee. And 
many a timid and bashful pair, naturally shy 
about exchanging expressions of mutual pref- 



FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. 317 

erence, suddenly spruce up their courage on 
coming to take parts in this scene, and some- 
how " pop the question " right there on the 
spot, without pausing to think what hurt them. 

Then the newly married couple think about 
" settling down " for themselves ; if they con- 
clude not to " go out West " the first year, the 
husband either settles on the old home-place 
under his father, or else buys or hires a farm 
by himself, and at once enters on his work as 
readily as a duckling takes to water. This side 
of the picture of beginning life, as some of the 
farmers' girls begin it, is both poetic and re- 
freshing. It has such a flavor of good sense, 
too. These are the girls who become the 
mothers of our Men ; — the men who build 
our steamships and lay our railways, — who 
are to raise the character of their own calling, 
— on whom our cities make regular drafts for 
the brain, and bone, and sinew by which they 
are sustained and strengthened, — and who 
carry close in their hearts and hands the hopes 
of the coming years. 

Blessed are the men who can say their 

mothers were country girls. They at least are 
inheritors of health, — and, in these days, that 
is something. They have heard something in 
their youth, if they have not themselves seen 



318 



HOMESPUN. 



it, about grass, and dew, and trees, and the 
sunrise and sunset ; and these are objects that 
enter a great deal farther into the heart of 
human nature than worldly people, with poor 
souls, are apt to suppose. 





FARMERS' SONS, 

SINCE the farmers of the country give it 
substance and character to-day, we may 
expect their sons to make up the warp and 
woof of the community that is to flourish after 
we sleep in the dust. 

In the city, boys are nothing like what boys 
used to be, say five-and-twenty years ago. 
They begin about where their fathers left off. 
But, back in the country, it is not exactly so. 
There the boys start nearly as their fathers — 
in many cases, as their grandfathers — started 
before them. They enjoy a few more privi- 
leges in a very general way, to be sure ; but 
still they are forced to split the toughest sort 
of knots for their early living, and accustom 
themselves to hardships and privations which 
to city youth would be absolutely unendur- 
able. 

A farmer's son is a young fellow who carries 
his fortune in his hand. He inherits nothing, 
— if he be the one to leave the paternal roof, 



320 HOMESPUN. 

— and feels, therefore, that he has every- 
thing to make, and nothing to lose. Disci- 
plined by the hard knocks to which he has been 
forced to submit, and toughened by the con- 
stant exposure to all sorts of luck about him, 
with his purpose fixed steadily in his heart, he 
pushes along in life, and comes out somehow 

— no one can seem to tell how — just where 
nobody ever thought he would, and far ahead 
of the point which richer men's sons reach be- 
hind him. 

The farmer's boy has a hard time of it from 
the beginning. As soon as he is big enough 
to be trusted out-doors alone, they send him on 
errands to the neighbors, set him running after 
the cows, make him carry the milk and the 
haymakers' luncheon, and practise all manner 
of ingenious expedients to keep him out of 
mischief between the house and the barn. He 
is an article of no particular, but of very gen- 
eral use. In the house and out of the house, 
he never fails to come in play. 

If there is any churning to be done, straight- 
way a long towel is rigged about his neck, and 
he dashes away at the old-fashioned churn as 
if he were in pursuit of his living in good ear- 
nest. If the cattle have got into the corn, he 
takes the old house-dog and sets out pell-m^ll 



FARMERS' SONS. 321 

after them, with a whoop and hurrah that 
echoes all about the yard. If the paths are to 
be shovelled through the newly fallen snow, he 
plunges in head-foremost, and wallows about 
till he is whiter than a venerable miller, from 
top to toe. When the spring winds from the 
south begin to blow over the hill-sides and up- 
lands, and the farmer collects his forces to mark 
out his fields in long and billowy furrows, young 
Joe climbs to the back of gentle Old Dobbin, 
and both tug together patiently from morning 
till night to turn the moist earth with the shin- 
ing ploughshare. 

The work of the farmer's boy is never done, 
though it begins as soon as his father calls him 
in the morning. He washes his ruddy face 
under the pump-spout, in the summer morn- 
ings, or at the well in the yard, — combs his 
tangled hair with any sort of implement that 
can be turned to such account, and hurries off 
to the cow^-yard to help about the milking. In 
the winter-time, this makes cold work enough 
for him, as he will testify by stamping on the 
barn-floor, or by knocking his boots together 
after the fashion of his elders. If it be sum- 
mer, as soon as all the milk-pails have been 
filled, he starts off, whip in hand, to drive the 
milky mothers to the distant pasture, and 

21 



822 HOMESPUN. 

you may hear the sharp crack of his lash, or 
the shrill echoes of his voice, for a long way 
down the silent country road. When he gets 
back to the house, his feet coated with sand, 
and the bottoms of his trousers bedraggled in 
the dew and grass, he has the stomach for just 
as much breakfast as they choose to set before 
him. Sometimes it is a basin of bread-and- 
milk ; sweet, new milk, of course, and bread 
as brown as the tanned face and hands he ex- 
hibits at the table. Oftentimes, too, a bite of 
cold meat, or a piece of pie, to " top off with.'' 
Always it is what the young chap knows very 
well, by that time, how to eat, and eat with 
all the zest of which his young constitution is 
capable. 

If he earns a few odd coppers, now arid 
then, by running of errands for the neighbors, 
and can take such good care of them as that 
they will not burn in his pocket, you may put 
your hand on him as one destined to be a rich 
man^ in good time, even if he comes to nothing 
more. Sometimes, however, he hoards these 
meagre earnings but for the annual *' train- 
ings " in May and September ; on which occa- 
sions he makes lavish investments in card-gin- 
gerbread and spruce beer, washing down huge 
semi-circular bites of the former with gulps of 



FARMERS' SONS. 323 

the latter that would well-nigh choke the throat 
of an experienced town-pump. Or, perhaps, 
he lays up his money against the time when 
he shall want a new cap, a new suit, or a new 
pair of boots to begin the next winter in. He 
is taught thrift as naturally as talking. He 
observes that everybody about him is engaged 
in bartering, selling, trading, and scheming to 
" make things go," and he catches the spirit of 
the practice as quick as he would bring home 
the measles from the over-crowded school-room. 
Those of his own household teach him econ- 
omy as soon as he can observe and reason. 
He early comes to find that his battle with the 
world will be single-handed, that the opposi- 
tion will never relax, and that he will have to 
fight to the end to keep himself where men 
like generally to be thought standing. 

All the smoky maxims that pertain to domes- 
tic economy and advancement, he has got by 
heart ; and, mixed and jumbled up with them, 
is a mass of " Poor Richard's " worldly wisdom, 
which makes of the compound a body of axi- 
omatic truth sufficient to stand him in hand for 
his entire lifetime. Stories which his great- 
grandfather used to tell with such a relish in 
his day, are stuffed in his memory, possibly to 
be set afloat again on a current of tradition 



824 HOMESPUN. 

that will delight his own children and great- 
grandchildren after him. 

He learns the history of the old French War 
and the Revolution at his father's fireside ; and 
it is the more vividly painted to his imagina- 
tion with the aid of the glowing oak and hick- 
ory coals wherein he strives to locate the stirring 
battle-scenes. If his mother be the mother she 
should, and such as our best and greatest men 
have had from the beginning, he must know all 
about the Bible history in his very earliest days, 
and can probably tell you more even than you 
find you know yourself of Saul and David, and 
Samuel, and Joshua, and Absalom, and the 
prophet Daniel, and Queen Esther, and the 
carrying away into captivity. The old Dutch 
tiles about the fireplace are not, to be sure, to 
be found in the homestead whence he springs, 
but he holds as many pictures as were ever 
etched on them, ineradically impressed upon 
his youthful heart. 

In summer, he rarely thinks of going to 
school after reaching his twelfth or fifteenth 
year, but buckles down to the busy season's 
work with as much energy as the best of them. 
First comes planting : that is, the fences hav- 
ing been previously repaired, and the stones 
carefully picked off the mowing-lands. Then 



FARMERS' SONS. 325 

it is hoeing ; once, twice, thrice, when he 
makes his young back ache long before bed^ 
time, trying to keep up with the older hands 
on the farm. Then, haying ; and this is the 
year's carnival to him. No impatient chap in 
school looks forward more wistfully to the 
" letting out ; " and he watches with wonder- 
ful closeness the clover and timothy as it 
ripens, and listens with such a gush of glad 
sympathy to the quail that whistles on the rail 
that rides the wall of the mo wing-lot j and keeps 
asking and asking when the sharpened scythe is 
going to be put in. All the morning, at this 
time, he stands and turns the grindstone for 
the mowers ; runs about the barns and out- 
buildings for some implement that has myste- 
riously gone astray ; assists in harnessing the 
horses, and yoking and unyoking the cattle; 
carries the luncheons down into the hay-fields ; 
rakes after the cart ; turns the hay while it is 
curing ; and frolics with dogs and boys, toward 
night, among the haycocks that dot the field, 
till his head swims almost too much to permit 
him to remember his own name. 

In the very last days of July, and along 
through the month of August, he is busy be- 
yond telling among the huckleberry bushes and 
blackberry vines. He secures quart upon quart 



326 HOMESPUN. 

of these luscious fruits, sometimes toiling in 
the company of nothing but his bread-and- 
cheese luncheon from the dewy sunrise till the 
fading sunset. He brings home stained fingers 
and full baskets, as the best proofs of his indus- 
try and perseverance. The berries not needed 
for family use he is permitted to sell ; and the 
aggregate of these proceeds of his merchandis- 
ing would be very likely to surprise you. 

Baskets-full are lifted on to the stage-driver's 
box, every morning when he passes over the 
road ; and the driver is as exact in making 
change for him as if he were an accredited 
agent of the Rothschilds or the Barings. Few 
are the delights which summer offers him so 
unalloyed for his young heart as these of his 
excursions in the pastures for berries. He 
always loves, in after life, to revert to these 
days of innocence, and lingers on them with 
the whole tenderness of his nature. When he 
comes to manhood and the carking cares of 
the world's business, how many times he 
wishes he could but go barefoot once more 
as he used to do among the bushes and along 
the river's bank, inspired with the most truly 
independent feeling of which his heart was 
then, or since has been capable. 

A deal of boyish love, too, is made in these 



FARMERS' SONS. 327 

halcyon days ; under the apple-trees, and by 
the concealing stone walls, or in the dark 
shadows of a young walnut-tree, while Susy, 
or Lucy, or Jane is trying to pick the berries 
from the bushes he has broken for one of them. 
Many a tender little heart gives itself away for- 
ever in the midst of these sweet seclusions, 
shaping its whole future life by the heedless 
but innocent impulses of the hour. 

Through these summer days, the farmer's 
boy is kept at work as long as there is any light 
for him to see by ; and then, with a stomach 
full of bread-and-milk, he goes off tired and 
staggering to bed. A king might envy him his 
golden sleep, for then it is he is a king himself. 
If such sweet and dewy slumber would but fall 
on his lids when he becomes a man ! 

When the Harvest Time approaches, he feels 
that the end of his hard labor is drawing nigh. 
He counts up the turkeys to see what Thanks- 
giving is likely to offer in the shape of prom- 
ises. He looks impatiently forward to the day 
when school will begin for the winter in the 
little school-house at the fork of the roads, and 
wonders who is to be the lucky man to teach 
and flog the boys of the district during the 
winter. 

As he stalks through the fall stubble, he tears 



328 HOMESPUN. 

his tender ankles and cuts his naked feet with 
its bristling edges, and goes too often bleeding 
to bed. Then, he has corn-stalks to cut and 
stack ; potatoes to dig and lug to the cart; tur- 
nips to pull till his hands feel like a bed of net- 
tles ; and all the odd jobs and chores to attend 
to that concern house and barn together. Burs 
get worked into his hair, and cockles stick all 
over his clothes. His feet are bruised and sore, 
and he goes with a limp that compels pity at 
sight. 

His winters are devoted to his schooling. 
He usually has four months of it ; and this suf- 
fices him until he comes to manhood, when he 
can do as much or as little for himself as he 
chooses. He sits in a tight room, that is alter- 
nately as hot as an oven and as cold as an ice- 
house; cons his lessons in the humming style 
of the old times; repeats them with all the 
nasalities and pedantic mannerisms taught him 
by the " master ; " has chilblains regularly, 
which he digs and pounds through his boots in 
the afternoons ; and thus worries through a 
winter after methods he is taught to consider 
at least improving, if not intellectual. 

Of a life like this, our city boys know noth- 
ing at all. When the young representatives 
of the two styles of existence chance to meet, 



FARMERS' SONS. 322 

it is chiefly to eye one the other with envy and 
contempt, and to keep their sympathies wide 
apart until they reach manhood. The country 
lad gapes and stares at the wonders of the 
town, and the city youth asks what kind of 
wood hickory is, and supposes every farmer's 
barn-yard keeps at least one cow on purpose to 
give cream. 

Nearly all the foremost men in our large 
cities were once farmers' boys. They left home 
in quest of their fortunes; and it is just such 
excellent qualities as they bring with their 
characters, that enrich our cities with the real 
wealth that holds them fast and firm. 

In his homespun suit, therefore, barefooted 
and gaping, the Farmer's Boy is not to be de- 
spised ; no, nor overlooked even. What he 
lacks is Opportunity. When that comes to 
him, he makes a fit career for himself without 
a great deal of assistance. If he stays behind 
and cultivates the old farm, taking good care 
of the " old folks " in their age, he still acts his 
part well, and merits our true commendation. 
He is emphatically a son of the brightest 
promise, and his inheritance in our country is 
rich enough to make all other men envious. 




THE HIBED MAN. 

■pERHAPS, on the whole, it is better that 
-^ all our agriculturists are not born with a 
farm to their hands, as some other men are said 
to be, with a " silver spoon in their mouth." 
Many, if not most of them, are obliged to 
study all the economies and strain every energy 
to secure the coveted prize at all ; but, putting 
this single prize before them, they think, care, 
and live for nothing else, save to reach the 
limit of their aims just as quickly as they can. 
Early and late, in sickness and in health, in 
season and out of season, by self-denials and 
sacrifices uncounted, by patience and a per- 
severance that never faints through loneliness 
and personal privation, they labor hard to the 
end, like gold-hunters for the buried gift that is 
to flood their world with sunshine. No man 
can tell them, either, how many cents make a 
dollar, nor how many dollars it is going to take 
to buy the farm on which they have set their 
hopes and hearts. 



THE HIRED MAN. 331 

Since the great West has opened wide its 
gates, the laboring men who fight these hand- 
to-hand battles with Fortune, have nearly all 
become emigrants, seeking the easier road to 
competence that lay open to them there ; yet 
plenty are left behind to maintain the charac- 
ter of the old class, and to illustrate the names 
of such as I am about to describe. 

When a working-man lets himself out to a 
Northern farmer, he contracts generally for the 
season of farm-work, — which includes plant- 
ing, hoeing, haying, and harvesting, — or else 
makes his bargain for the year. In the first 
instance, he gets from twelve to sixteen dol- 
lars per month, with his board, — or, if he en- 
joys a local reputation for being " uncommonly 
likely help," he can command even more ; since 
a good man's services are worth more in hay- 
ing-time than in any other season. But if he 
lets himself by the year, as a good share of 
farmers' help do, he rarely rises beyond twelve 
dollars a month, with board added. During 
much of the winter season, a working-man's 
help is of little value. The most he can do is 
to milk, go to mill, chop and haul wood, and 
do the chores about the house. The women 
call on him to go out and fetch in a forestick, 
or roll in a backlog. Sometimes he sits down 



832 HOMESPUN. 

on a stool and churns for them. Sometimes it 
is one thing, and sometimes another. He may- 
be always busy, but his work is nowise hard, 
and makes little or no show of immediate ad- 
vantage to his employer. 

Much of the farmers' help, at the present 
time, is made up of Irish laborers, — the un- 
adulterated, unqualified bog-trotters of their 
native land. Yet they have not altogether 
crowded Yankee laborers out of the field ; they 
have hardly more than stepped into the vacan- 
cies created by the Western fever that has 
carried so many off. Our farmers can do no 
better than to hire them. Now and then, one 
turns up a prize, but the bulk of them would 
as soon plant their potatoes in pits, on the day 
they handle their wages and leave, as on the 
day they first landed. In harnessing a horse, 
they would as soon throw the breeching over 
his head as over that part of his body which is 
ornamented with the tail. 

The life of the native hired-man, drudg- 
ing and wearisome as it looks to the careless 
observer, is still full of hope and buoyancy. He 
is not the friendless, melancholy, pitiful crea- 
ture you may take him for. While he sits 
there in the chimney-corner of the old kitchen, 
telling stories to the boys in a low tone, so as 



THE HIRED MAN. 333 

not to be overheard, the honest blaze of the fire 
shining out over his bronzed face, he is as much 
a king and lord as the man of the acres who 
hires him. He keeps no cares on his mind, but 
can take his candle and go off to bed in his 
stocking-feet with the certainty of sleeping as 
soundly as the house-dog before the fire. Pos- 
sibly he thinks of Home ; but it only makes 
him all the more determined and resolute to 
work out, somehow, a home of his own. 

In his mind, the future is mapped out as dis- 
tinctly as any man's. He counts over his sav- 
ings almost every day, knows just how much 
he put aside last month, how much he will this 
month, and what amount still stands between 
the present day and that on which he w^ill real- 
ize his desires. He is ever hopeful ; and, being 
hopeful, of course cheerful. The children love 
to hang around him, and you can hardly drive 
them away. Chestnuts, walnuts, slippery-elm 
bark, or something else, he has for all of them. 
He can tell them stories, or sing and whistle 
for them. Ghost-stories are his especial hobby, 
as they are likewise the delight of the younger 
ones, who swarm at his chair like bees at the 
doors of their hive. In their eyes, he is the 
wonder of a hero, and they really believe his 
past experience is such as was never paralleled. 



334 HOMESPUN. 

He sleeps in a chamber off by himself, gen- 
erally over the kitchen, — small and scantily 
furnished, with not a sign of a carpet on the 
floor, and perhaps only a bit of a broken mir- 
ror tacked against the wall. The rats and 
mice run at random about his head through 
the long nights of winter, kicking up racket 
enough to rain down the ceiling, but not dis- 
turbing him. He has earned his sleep, and 
not even a brigade of rats, racing like cavalry 
horses, can cheat him out of its possession. 

None are" so weather-wise as he. He prog- 
nosticates with vastly more accuracy than the 
wooden vane on the barn-gable, and knows as 
much about storms of snow and rain as the 
clerk of the weather himself. It is his forte, in 
Virgil's phrase — 

" Ventos et varium coeli prsediscere morem." 

The women go to him to know if it will do to 
wash to-morrow, and if it is likely to turn out 
good drying weather. He knows all the 
clouds " like a book ; " and stands behind the 
house at sunset, and studies their signs like a 
scholar before an algebraic problem on the 
blackboard. At such times, he seems to bear 
a close relation to the mysteries of Nature, as 
if he might have been chosen — without others 
knowing it — their high-priest and interpreter 



THE HIRED MAN. 335 

The children think so, at any rate. They be- 
lieve that if ever any man knew it all, it is he. 
And why ought it not to be as they believe ? 
He studies with the confidence of simplicity, 
and trusts with all the faith of a child. 

Perhaps there is a ruddy maid-servant living 
under the same roof. Perhaps, again, he has 
a " hankerin' notion " after that ruddy maid- 
servant. If so, the history of a single winter's 
sparking campaign at the kitchen fireplace is 
worthy to employ the pen that sketched the 
immortal siege of the Widow Wadman, — 
she with the troublesome eye. How he sits 
and pares apples over the same bowl with her, 
his hand touching her hand now and then, and 
her cheeks vieing with the very glow that lies 
abed beneath the forestick ! How coyly she 
busies herself over the stocking she is knitting, 
casting occasional sheep's-eyes over at him, 
and persuading her thumping heart that he is 
a fine, stout, strapping farmer fellow, after all, 
and would make her one of the best of hus- 
bands — if she can but secure him ! 

How sharp she watches him while he whit- 
tles, wondering what it can be he is making for 
the boys, and secretly wishing he would take 
it in his head to carve out some trifling keep- 
sake for her ! 



336 HOMESPUN. 

But before winter is done, he and she have 
managed to establish a good many confi- 
dences. He has let out some of his ulterior 
plans in life to her, and she has seen fit to be 
equally candid with him. These little recitals 
have had the effect, of course, to draw both 
closer together, and to make a sort of joint- 
stock of their general sentiments. While he 
has been holding skeins of yarn for her to 
wind, there is no telling how many times their 
eyes have exchanged expressive glances, nor 
what he may have dropped to her in a low 
voice, as often as the thread got entangled. 
When they both sat and stared at the glowing 
bed of coals at night, it is easy enough to con- 
jecture that they saw a house and lands all 
pictured out in the fiery mass, and to infer 
that, concerning that house, they had indulged 
in many interesting speculations. If each 
chanced to like the other, the road to a match 
was smooth and easy; but if the partiality 
was developed as yet but on one side, it was 
indescribably amusing to watch the turns, the 
shifts, the innocent prevarications, and the 
daily manoeuvring, that were employed to 
stimulate the esteem of the dilatory party. 
Sly hints — unseen kindnesses — long breaths 
and sighs — sidelong glances — and melan- 



THE HIRED MAN. 337 

choly looks were put under tribute with all 
possible industry, and kept in constant and 
vigorous use until the field was finally won. 

The hired man reads the agricultural papers 
now; once, he would never have thought of 
such a thing. Instead of being kept down to 
firelight, he has the use of a candle ; and there 
is many and many a hard-working fellow who 
had not a dollar with which to face the round 
world at the start, saving what he made 
through the day, and treasuring up what he 
read at night, who now owns his farm clear of 
mortgages of any grade, and wields an honest 
influence second to that of no man in his lo- 
cality. He did it simply by persevering : that 
is the way the soft water-drops wear holes in 
the hard rock, at last. He did it by shutting 
out every other thought and purpose from his 
view, and pursuing only that object which he 
had thus set before himself in his early youth. 
He made up his mind, with God's blessing, to 
reach his mark, and he reached it. Any one 
can conquer, in the battle of life, if he buckles 
on his armor in a similar spirit. 

If he earns a hundred and fifty dollars each 
year, with his board added, he means to save 
a hundred and twenty-five of it, if he can. 
Plenty of them do it, too. In this patient 

22 



338 HOMESPUN. 

way, working year in and year out with un- 
flagging perseverance, he presently manages to 
make a beginning towards his farm, and is 
willing to buy with a mortgage on his shoul- 
ders, trusting to good health and hard work 
to redeem his indebtedness and enable him 
to stand clear of all incumbrances finally. 
"Whether he pays down five, seven, or ten 
hundred dollars to begin with, he means to 
clear up his bushes and mortgages as fast as 
he can, and be at length his own master. 

Or, he sometimes only hires a farm, and 
stocks it with the means he has managed to 
scrape together. In such case, he takes to 
wife the girl whom he has all along been 
courting at the kitchen fire, and they at once 
move in and set up housekeeping. The elder 
farrtiers, of assured estates, show him a good 
deal of patronage at meeting and in the store, 
addressing him by his Christian name and 
asking him how he is getting along. But his 
upper lip takes on more decided expression as 
year is added to year, and he lives along with 
nursing his silent resolution to be even with 
them by and by. It is nothing — the whole 
of it — but a struggle for money, just as the 
boys strive for marbles and jack-straws ; and it 
is off the same piece, out in the sweet country, 



^ THE HIRED MAN, 339 

that one studies the pattern of so closely, in 
hustling Wall Street. 

Few, however, get to be forehanded very- 
soon, in hiring a farm in this way ; all who 
do must needs be most industrious workers. 
They must keep at it from cock-crow till early 
moonrise, the year round. They have to work 
hard, eat hard, and sleep hard ; it is the hard 
dollars they are after. Even all this will not 
secure the prize, health being thrown in beside, 
unless intelligence presides at the board, and 
gives shape to their industry. They must 
keep fully abreast with the times, at any rate ; 
and these are the most wide-awake times the 
world was ever confused with yet. They 
must know a little something about the results 
of experiments in agricultural chemistry. They 
must be ready to adopt the real improvements 
in agricultural machinery. They cannot be 
unmindful of the best theories relative to the 
rotation of crops, and the soundest ideas rela- 
tive to manures. They must be ready to as- 
sail the buried wealth of their swamp lands, 
and drag up the hidden gold to the surface. 
Artificial irrigation, too, will pay for attending 
to, that promising fields may not yearly be left 
to burn up and perish. They must sit down 
and estimate the practical value, to them, of 



340 HOMESPUN. 

root culture in furnishing feed for stock, in its 
combination with the old-style rules of provid- 
ing animal subsistence in plenty. They are to 
understand, at the start, the nature of their 
soils, — what they lack, and how and in what 
quantities the lack is best supplied. Nor may 
they quite shut their eyes to the plain road to 
competency by the raising of orchard fruits — - 
apples, pears, and quinces ; this is a mine of 
wealth which our farmers have been too slow 
to go and open. They must think it either pott 
tering or dangerous. When they once wake 
up to it as an important item in their own 
business, our unsupplied millions v^^ill have 
fruit enough to become both juicier and health- 
ier than now. 

The hired man's life, with our Northern 
farmers, is but an apprenticeship. Some of 
them emerge from it to pass to the dignity of 
proprietorship ; while a great many more con- 
tinue in harness, tugging at the traces, and 
dragging out a solitary existence to the end of 
their days. They lie about, here and there, 
jobbing as the opportunity offers ; laboring 
one season in this place, and another season in 
that ; now laying by a trifle, and now saving 
scarce a penny; good-natured and trustful 
generally; as dry and smoky as the soot that 



THE HIRED MAN. 341 

collects about their favorite chimney-corners ; 
troubling themselves nowise with care or am- 
bition ; as full of gossip as old ladies over their 
fragrant Oolong decoctions, and addicted to a 
garrulousness that, to all the children where 
they go, is as delightful as a new story-book. 
Bachelors they live, and bachelors they die; 
and, as a matter of course, living but half their 
natural days. 

Odd sticks in the bundle they are, incapable 
of being either tied up or assorted. Needful 
to the farmer, yet profitless, so far as results 
reach, to themselves. A happy, hard-working, 
necessary, favorite class of men. 




THE TURKEY NEST 

Out in the lots, just under the edge 

Of some birches that hide a ragged ledge, 

An old hen turkey has made a nest 

Of dried oak-leaves about her breast, 

And there she sits by herself all day, — 

Sits and sits from April to May. 

She has stolen off from the flock at home, 

And out to this lonely spot has come 

To raise, unseen, her summer brood 

Of speckled poults in the sweet green wood. 

The boys have all in vain essayed 

To find where the sly and secret old jade 

Her nest of eggs has securely laid ; 

And the gobbler saunters off all alone, 

To see where the lady has really gone : — 

But there she sits on her spotted eggs. 

Heaped up so warm beneath her legs, — 

Sits under her thatch of pale green leaves, 

That shed the drops like a farmer's eaves, 

Through damps and mists and cloudy weather. 

Without ever so much as wetting a feather. 

In the midst of the music of April rains. 

And the bursting of flowers all over the plains, 



THE TURKEY NEST. 343 

And the sweet green grass, that steadily creeps 
Across the meadows and up to the steeps, — 
Sits and watches, and sits and sleeps. 

Her liquid eye, so full and so bright, 

Is like some jewel that's swimming with light; 

And everywhere in its great round rim 

Is packed with motherly love to the brim. 

She spies the hawk in his highest flight, 

And the thieving skunk in the darkest night; 

And when the owl whoops out its cry. 

She winks and blinks and looks up at the sky, 

Crooning her fierce anxiety. 

What is she thinking of, lone squatter there. 

Thinking and winking, through foul and through 

fair ? 
Squirrels chattering up in the trees. 
Pirates of crows bearing down in the breeze. 
Portly old wookchucks passing her door — 
Now on their hind-feet, and now on all four; 
Rabbits listening to hear where 's the noise 
That comes from the dogs in the wood with the 

boys ; 
Robins in haste, with their mouths full of mud, 
Dug from the marge of some little spring flood ; 
Brown thrushes pouring melodious notes. 
Not all their own, but from out their own throats ; 
A fox, now and then, flitting by like a ghost, 
And a chipmonk laughing to see the scamp post; 
Bumble-bees leaving a long trail of song, 



844 HOMESPUN. 

And gay-coated insects, a murmuring throng ; 

Runlets trickling from ledge to ledge 

To water the roots of sprouting sedge ; 

All patterns of clouds on the blue of the sky, 

Woven by shuttles that wind-fingers ply, — 

All through the Spring nights, out under the 

stars, ; • 

Orion or Pleiades, Venus or Mars, 
She thinks, and she winks, with her motherly 

breast 
Down on the heap of her warm treasures pressed. 

She thinks of the chicks that will start and 

run, — ■ 
Eighteen, twenty, or twenty-one, — 
Of how they will troop with her off in the dews, 
Yawping till even her heart they confuse, 
Up the green hill-sides, through forests of ferns. 
And down where the little brook tangles and 

turns. 
Roaming at will through the long summer day, 
From the moment the dawn bids them up and 

away, 
And sleeping at night where the night overtakes 

them, 
Huddled and safe in the bed that she makes 

them. 
Till, waxing in strength, they scale the stone walls, 
And on all the farmers make regular calls, — 
Now hid in their corn-fields, now trampling their 

oats, 



THE TURKEY NEST. 345 

Skulking, and yelping, and cramming their throats, — 
In the woods, after acorns just out of the cup, 
Off in the lots, snapping grasshoppers up, 
Getting thick on the thighs and stout on the 

breast. 
And seeming to see which will turn out the best. 

And the old turkey thinks that the time then will 

come, 
When through the still woods sounds the par- 
tridge's drum. 
The chill autumn nights will give hints to go 

home ; 
When up in the apple-trees near the back-door. 
With sky for a roof and bare boughs for a floor, 
Or perched on the ridge of the barn or the shed. 
All squat in a row, head close up to head, 
They doze through the nights till the first streak 

of dawn 
Calls them down from their roosts for their ration 

of corn. 
And, soon after, comes the good Thanksgiving 

Day, 
When the winter of age takes the green on of 

May, 
And all spirits are back in the homestead at play : 
Upon the long table that 's spread in the room, 
Padded out with many a savory crumb. 
Heads off their shoulders and wings skewered 

down, 



346 HOMESPUN. 

Legs in the air and breasts roasted brown, — 
There lie two of these poults, each on a broad 

platter, 
While over them rings the loud family clatter. 

And but to the end of this glad sacrifice 
To the annual call of the Home Deities, 
Do the chicks ever pick through the walls of 

their shell. 
Or grow fat in the woods, on the steelyards to 

tell 
What a weight of sweet meat they are able to 

score. 
And bring it upon their own backs to the door. 
As turkeys have done, generations before : 
The Thanksgiving feast would be no great affair. 
Except this dear carcass were prominent there ; 
Of the " fat and the sweet " that help give the day 

zest. 
The choicest part comes from the old Turkey 

Nest. 



THE END. 



